Where’s the Creative? Blending Digital Marketing Skillsets

In my pre­vi­ous post, I talked about the con­se­quences of neglect­ing the role of the cre­ative. Mak­ing cre­ative play sec­ond fid­dle to data-mining or click-bait strate­gies is short­sighted, and has been proven to hurt prof­its in the long run. The cre­ative is as essen­tial to your bot­tom line as the color blue is to Van Gogh’s Starry Night. But red and yel­low are no less essen­tial to that night-sky palette, with its warm orange and deep pur­ple hues.

The point of the metaphor is that the three pri­mary roles of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing are equally impor­tant, and increas­ingly inter­de­pen­dent. Now that you get the pic­ture, the ques­tion is: How can your com­pany unite and inte­grate all three to con­ceive, exe­cute, and deliver your mes­sage to the right people?

I’ve come up with five ways the mar­keter and the IT pro can blend with the cre­ative to cre­ate a var­ied and vibrant color wheel of capa­bil­i­ties to draw on at any time.

Five Ways to Blend Your Pri­mary Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Colors

1. Mar­ket­ing helps cre­atives under­stand the needs of the customer.

Dig­i­tal mar­keters can help cre­atives ground their con­cepts in a deep under­stand­ing of cus­tomers’ needs, prob­lems, desires, and aspi­ra­tions. The creative’s nat­ural abil­ity to empathize and make work that res­onates with oth­ers is focused and enhanced by the marketer’s data and insight. Plus, dig­i­tal mar­keters can ensure that the right cre­ative con­tent reaches the right peo­ple at the right time—an invalu­able asset to cre­atives seek­ing an audi­ence. Mean­while, cre­ative helps mar­ket­ing build a more com­pelling, mem­o­rable, and rel­e­vant brand for their fans.

2. IT enables cre­ative to exe­cute ideas.

Cre­atives like to dream big, and some­times their vision exceeds their abil­i­ties. The IT pro has the skills and know-how to help cre­atives exe­cute their bril­liant ideas, whether it’s a video pro­duc­tion, a cutting-edge site or app to sup­port great con­tent, more fluid browser inte­gra­tion, or a user expe­ri­ence revamp. The medium is the mes­sage, after all, and IT can help cre­ative depart­ments make sure con­tent doesn’t get lost in tech­no­log­i­cal translation.

3. Mar­ket­ing keeps cre­ative accountable …

Cre­atives can become so con­sumed by—and attached to—their work that they lose sight of what’s hap­pen­ing in the indus­try. Mar­keters keep an eye on the com­pe­ti­tion, and know exactly how their com­pany is per­form­ing. Their atten­tion to data, met­rics, and key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors (KPIs) can bal­ance the creative’s some­times lofty and sub­jec­tive out­look. And because cre­ativ­ity can’t always be crammed into a pre­dictable sched­ule, mar­ket­ing can help out by stay­ing on top of pro­duc­tion sched­ules and pri­or­i­tiz­ing tasks.

4. … while cre­ative helps mar­ket­ing innovate.

Account­abil­ity goes both ways. Mar­keters may become so con­sumed by—and attached to—their mile­stones and sched­ules that they lose sight of what mat­ters: con­nect­ing with cus­tomers. Cre­atives have this audi­ence in mind, and are dri­ven to speak to peo­ple through their work. Some­times pri­or­i­ties need to be rearranged and met­rics reex­am­ined in light of the cre­ative ques­tion: What will leave the great­est impact on the viewer?

5. IT equips mar­ket­ing and cre­ative with research.

The typ­i­cal IT pro is ahead of the curve. IT pros always get their hands on the most advanced gad­gets and tech­nol­ogy as soon as they hit the mar­ket. Maybe they were an early Google Glass adopter, or built their own DIY super­com­puter in their spare time. Tech­nol­o­gists know all the avail­able, up-to-the-minute tech­no­log­i­cal options and capa­bil­i­ties, and can tell cre­atives exactly what to use to make their lat­est, great­est idea a real­ity. IT pros work on the front­lines so when mar­ket­ing and cre­ative are ready to move, the imple­men­ta­tion strate­gies and meth­ods are already in place.

ROI of Collaboration

Kevin Burke, chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer at Visa, explains the company’s per­spec­tive on cre­ativ­ity:

“Cre­ativ­ity is a mind­set that we look to infuse across every­thing we do. It starts with mar­keters who are pas­sion­ate about cre­ativ­ity and ‘the work.’ We find that the best way to build that cul­ture is to have a team of peo­ple with diverse back­grounds from lead­ing brands, agen­cies, con­sul­tan­cies and tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies from around the world.”

Their active atten­tion to achiev­ing an effec­tive “blend” pays off in inno­v­a­tive cam­paigns and experience-centric apps.

ROI is mea­sured in more than sales con­ver­sions; it is also the sum of your content’s reach and engage­ment. When IT, mar­ket­ing, and cre­ative col­lab­o­rate, they can cre­ate orig­i­nal, acces­si­ble, emo­tion­ally res­o­nant, and highly share­able work. And in today’s dig­i­tal land­scape, this level of cus­tomer engage­ment is what it takes to reach your busi­ness objec­tives for the long term.

For more information, visit my blog here: http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/author/loni-stark/