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Sometimes I get lost reading articles on groundbreaking marketing campaigns tips, allegedly innovative Apps and trends on social media. Together with on-line advertising, social media seem to dominate the marketing landscape and people tend to use this magic word in every context, even when inappropriate.
I’m interested in all these unceasing developments that have been bringing some fresh air to the marketing arena and I’m particularly attracted by the psychological dynamics that lie behind them. However, I sometimes feel that these tools divert attention from the premier ingredient of communication: creativity.
If big brands usually boast a strong and experienced creative team and a significant budget to sustain an integrated campaign that can really exploit specific features of print and digital media, many companies with average resources, i.e. lesser mortals that represent the majority of the market, often put more effort into using tools to emphasise their campaign rather than in the creation process of the campaign itself.
Nowadays you can easily spot an advert with a QR code on it or watch loads of videos followed and surrounded by the Twitter, Facebook and any other possible share buttons, but it is pretty common that you have to deal with poor and predictable adverts. These don’t really persuade you to share them with the rest of the world and create a buzz around them!
It also doesn’t come as a surprise that campaigns with double meanings dropping sexual hints are still very popular (especially in my native country); sex always sells and provides you with easy copy avoiding the occurrence of a creative block. Sticking to this topic, some companies really are scraping the bottom of the barrel though.
In addition, what about those pop-up advertising windows that instantly come up on our screen when we open a webpage and perhaps try to read the news? This is unquestionably a great marketing idea to grab users’ attention, but please put your hand up if you’ve never sworn when you had to deal with a window that didn’t want to disappear and you were desperately looking for that recognisable close button. Once again, if the content of these is truly creative, interesting and innovative if you’re like me you’ll probably be keen on having a further look at it, but otherwise that advert is just an annoying distraction.
Creativity is a never ending process crucial to growth and development. What’s more, it makes us stand out from the crowd. People shouldn’t mix it up with advertising tools and media; these are the valuable extensions of creativity, not vice versa.