Are You Too Busy to Be Creative?

We see this all the time when talking to clients. You’re short-staffed and mentally fried. But, you’ve got a marketing budget and need creative ways to promote yourself or your products. I know…NuVoodoo has a bunch of clients, how about we just tell you what to do and that should work, right?

Yes and no.

One of the benefits of having a lot of diverse clients is that it allows us to see across a wide spectrum, highlight best practices from each, and share what we’ve learned with new and old clients alike.

But we aren’t the arbiter of your brand. We can brainstorm and offer thoughts and connect the dots between your vision and the audience with superior targeting, but the ultimate authority on how your brand is expressed to the public is still yours.

So how do we reconcile that with that whole “not enough bodies” and “eventually I’d like to sleep if for no other reason than to escape everything that’s going on the in-world” thing? We must get creative again. Easier said than done, I know, especially since everyone works differently.

Maybe it’s dedicating time to just brainstorming with no other agenda. If nothing comes out of it, no problem. Perhaps the next one will.

Maybe it means identifying/adding someone to the team with a track record and desire to be the “idea person;” Someone that can keep your marketing fresh by pushing the envelope on a consistent basis.

Regardless of what works best for you, there’s one trap we see often that you should make sure to avoid: ingredients. It’s easy to list the things that set your brand apart (though many times, they are indistinguishable from your competitor’s list of ingredients) and think that’s going to be enough. If you’re going to do that, however, it better be memorable. Fellow children of the 80s will recall when Mcdonald’s did just that with their Big Mac and Menu songs.

Examples of successful “ingredient” marketing are rare, and instead, we’d encourage you to focus on the benefits. How does your brand connect with its audience? How does it make them feel? How does it fit into their life? Why should your audience engage with you?

Take Diet Coke, for example. They are a paragon of zero-calorie cola marketing, yet you never see them tout their “best variety of carbonated water, caramel food coloring, and aluminum.” Instead, they use their website to paint the following picture:

It takes the message from being a utility to forcing you to envision your life with their product as a part of it. It evokes a lifestyle; an opportunity to enhance their target audience’s lives.

Benefits, not ingredients.

On Facebook, this is their current cover photo:

“Fizzy” tells a more evocative story than “carbonated.” Simple language tweaks can make all the difference. And it’s in that difference we see the way forward, even on days when creativity feels the least attainable.