I was privileged to attend Seasons of Love last night at the Royal Albert Hall, a celebration of the love, life and times of the WI Calendar Girls. I was asked to assist them with their PR back in 1999. I knew straight away that the unique take on raising money for charity would capture the public's imagination. Classic marketing training told me so. There was a clear and unique story, an obvious audience and a good way to get the message out. Good PR practice, therefore, helped an amazing story go global. Social media has changed the landscape PR works in yet somethings remain unchanged. Whilst it is now possible to engage consumers of news directly and encourage them to contribute to stories and features, you can't get away from the basic building block of what's the story angle, who do you want to tell the story to and why should they be bothered?
Monday 8 October 2012
Saturday 25 August 2012
Getting more creative
Marketers are expected to do many things but getting creative is often overlooked. Sure, creative agencies can provide the spark and brilliance needed but marketers need to get their creative juices flowing in a wide variety of situations.
Is your tweet up to scratch?
It could be a range of things that we all do to engage customers including writing better direct mail copy, content for your website, creating a story angle for a press release, getting a tweet re-tweeted widely, getting Likes of your Facebook page - the list is long and getting longer.
Taste and metrics
What's good and what's outstanding is a matter of taste and the results the works generates can be measured of course. But my contention is that work informed by creative approach is much stronger and has a better chance of wowing customers.
Letts investigate
Both Letts an Moleskine compete in the same sector - diaries and notebooks. Letts is long established with Moleskine a relative newcomer.
Both companies have good back stories that are central to their brand and marketing communications. Moleskine does it better though. It has carefully crafted a story that makes a strong connection with great writers such as Ernest Hemmingway and the notebook you have bought that is in your pocket. In reality, Moleskine wasn't about when Hemingway was alive but it doesn't matter - the link between the greats of the past and their modern products has been successfully made by being creative and making sure the story is well told. Read it yourself here. What do you think? I think it really appeals to intelligent, affluent consumers. Here's Letts's story too.
Turning on creativity
So how to turn on the creativity? The good news is that there is scientific research that helps focus the mind to produce good results.
Making you and your team more creative
Brainstorming or mind mapping is often unsuccessful in generating ideas. It's the way you set things up that effects the quality of the results. Try the following:
1. Start by getting the team to carry out a short intensive task where they have to think hard but not related to the problem e.g. a crossword. Award a prize to the person who does best.
2. Try and be in place where greenery, trees, shrubs etc are visible say from a window in the room in which you are working. Failing that, have some flowers in the room, or an image of a peaceful pastoral scene on your screen or printed out and placed on the walls. Getting the ambiance right really does aid creativity. Break your team into smaller teams.
3. Ask the teams to approach the problem in the shoes of another person to get a different perspective e.g. what would a child think, what would our customers think?
4. Ask the team to be constructively critical of any ideas - this process will get members out of their comfort zone and produce better results.
5. Rotate membership of the mini teams to introduce new ideas.
6. Keep the session short say 30 minutes, come back together and agree what ideas you are going to progress. Make the list short so it's achievable and allocate who will progress and arrange to come back together to review progress.
I have successfully used these ideas in both b2b and b2c situations and they have been scientifically tested. See the great book, 59 Seconds by Professor R Wiseman for more details.
Is your tweet up to scratch?
It could be a range of things that we all do to engage customers including writing better direct mail copy, content for your website, creating a story angle for a press release, getting a tweet re-tweeted widely, getting Likes of your Facebook page - the list is long and getting longer.
Taste and metrics
What's good and what's outstanding is a matter of taste and the results the works generates can be measured of course. But my contention is that work informed by creative approach is much stronger and has a better chance of wowing customers.
Letts investigate
Both Letts an Moleskine compete in the same sector - diaries and notebooks. Letts is long established with Moleskine a relative newcomer.
Both companies have good back stories that are central to their brand and marketing communications. Moleskine does it better though. It has carefully crafted a story that makes a strong connection with great writers such as Ernest Hemmingway and the notebook you have bought that is in your pocket. In reality, Moleskine wasn't about when Hemingway was alive but it doesn't matter - the link between the greats of the past and their modern products has been successfully made by being creative and making sure the story is well told. Read it yourself here. What do you think? I think it really appeals to intelligent, affluent consumers. Here's Letts's story too.
Turning on creativity
So how to turn on the creativity? The good news is that there is scientific research that helps focus the mind to produce good results.
Making you and your team more creative
Brainstorming or mind mapping is often unsuccessful in generating ideas. It's the way you set things up that effects the quality of the results. Try the following:
1. Start by getting the team to carry out a short intensive task where they have to think hard but not related to the problem e.g. a crossword. Award a prize to the person who does best.
2. Try and be in place where greenery, trees, shrubs etc are visible say from a window in the room in which you are working. Failing that, have some flowers in the room, or an image of a peaceful pastoral scene on your screen or printed out and placed on the walls. Getting the ambiance right really does aid creativity. Break your team into smaller teams.
3. Ask the teams to approach the problem in the shoes of another person to get a different perspective e.g. what would a child think, what would our customers think?
4. Ask the team to be constructively critical of any ideas - this process will get members out of their comfort zone and produce better results.
5. Rotate membership of the mini teams to introduce new ideas.
6. Keep the session short say 30 minutes, come back together and agree what ideas you are going to progress. Make the list short so it's achievable and allocate who will progress and arrange to come back together to review progress.
I have successfully used these ideas in both b2b and b2c situations and they have been scientifically tested. See the great book, 59 Seconds by Professor R Wiseman for more details.
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