FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK
NATHAN FULWOOD
Strategy Director, CreateFuture
What Does It Take To Be Creative Today?
Creative fatigue is a reality for many marketers bogged down in the day-to-day. We explore how collaboration could be the key to designing solutions that transcend departmental divides.
A
s marketing continues to expand its capabilities, the line of communication between marketing teams
and agencies is becoming more complicated. How can marketers deliver creative solutions in a way that encourages inspiration, and communicates with all the relevant decision makers? Figaro Digital spoke to Nathan Fulwood, Strategy Director at CreateFuture, to fi nd out how this agency is challenging the preconceptions of creative inspiration.
Is This Your Card?
Marketers have been going to great lengths to deliver campaigns which are aligned to their brand values, communicate their personality, and grab the consumer’s attention. But consumers, especially the technically savvy digital natives, are wise to the tricks marketers use to grab their attention. “The word tricks is pivotal here,” says Fulwood. “As soon as you know how a trick is done, it loses its appeal, its magic.” Consumers have seen so much repetition in their newsfeeds and inboxes that previously successful methods are no longer paying off .
A Longer Lifespan
With consumers now having more control over the sort of content they wish to consume, brands must be off ering something valuable in exchange for their time, such as great content, personalised interaction or excellent customer service. And as Fulwood points out, this is nothing new. “To say that consumers are bored of content, isn’t true. A TV or radio advert done well is still going to be eff ective; it will add value, be well received, and deliver results.” It’s true
that consumers become a little misty- eyed and nostalgic when remembering their favourite marketing campaigns, whether that’s Heineken’s Water in Majorca parody, Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like ad, or Alexsandr the Meerkat. All three have the staying power that keeps them in conversation long after the campaign has ended. “We have a tendency as marketers to always be looking for the next big thing, thinking that we need to reinvent it, or that the customer must be bored of it, and it’s not always true,” says Fulwood. “A great piece of content can sit in a market and deliver results for six months, 12 months, 18 months, and even increase in value as its awareness grows.”
Everybody’s Welcome
Creativity continues to sit at the core of successful content, regardless of the technical stack or budget behind the scenes. How can marketers boost their creativity? “We make great use of the Design Sprint process and methodology,” says Fulwood. “It’s fun and it’s collaborative between internal and external teams. We have a lot of ideas and experience that we can bring in, and we work closely with a wide range of internal team members who can bring in a wider range of infl uences.” The Sprint method sees marketers spend an intense, interactive week tackling a challenge, involving a variety of skill sets and departments in the process. With an idea being designed, prototyped, and tested with real customers in just fi ve days, it avoids time and energy being wasted on multiple pitches or solutions, eradicates miscommunication, and makes sure everyone feels fully invested in the end result. “Collaboration means that everyone is excited to implement those ideas and take them forward,”
continues Fulwood. “They have ownership of them, they’ve authored them, they have a vested interest in making sure that an idea or a strategy becomes reality.”
Keeping It Fresh
Creativity is a diffi cult trait to sustain over a drawn-out planning and realisation process. So what advice does Fulwood have to avoid burnout? “The main point is to focus. We focus on a problem for a week, which is hugely liberating, and something that most people don’t generally get to do.” Marketers work on an array of tasks in a single day; Fulwood suggests this can hamper energy and motivation. “You might have 10 tasks on your to-do list, and you have to shift your mindset every time you switch task. We try to take our clients out of their day-to-day and spend a week on the problem. If you can spend some real time thinking on a problem, it’s invigorating. It gives people energy, and they make great progress because they’re allowed to focus on the solution.” By creating solutions with the brand
at the centre, marketers can be sure that the end solution is one that works for everyone, meets the disparate goals and KPIs of the whole team, and gives the consumer an end product or service they will truly benefi t from. “We can be quite blinkered in our industry,” says Fulwood. “But really we just need to make sure that we are creating ideas that are new and fresh. Think about how you can apply the expertise of your wider team in a diff erent way, look at how you can improve it. These are the things that will motivate you and your team to do a better job each time.”
createfuture.com
48 issue 31 spring 2018
Words: Gill Ingram
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