WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?
If there’s nothing to fix there’s nothing to do
What do creatives actually do?
There’s confusion. Too often they have been dubbed the ‘colouring in department’ or reduced to requests to make things ‘look pretty’ or ‘read good’.
But real creativity, the kind we actually need, looks at the world differently and spots new ways to solve problems.
A definition I like is, Commercial creativity is about bringing two things together to create value. And value is created for someone when an idea is new and useful.
So the barometer is not does it ‘look cool’ - but is it genuinely useful to someone and does it feel like something they can’t get anywhere else?
This is the same metric applied to creating new products or businesses as it is to creating a poster or a radio ad. Are we new and useful?
But what makes something useful? When it solves a problem for someone.
Well that seems like it makes sense but right now we’ve got an agency landscape which is scared of problems - it’s all about 10xing growth rather than fixing things. Because there’s nothing broken, we just need to scale.
The toxic growth mindset positivity of today is just one of the barriers stopping great creative work from happening.
GET NEGATIVE
If you’re not slightly miserable you’ll have a hard time being a creative.
Creatives are often dissatisfied with the world. Whether it’s Larry David spotting all the awkward social faux pas or Steve Jobs wanting to reduce friction in computing. They were grumpy people who saw that there was something wrong. There was something to fix. And they were belligerently relentless in challenging assumptions.
If you’re a smily optimistic person you’ll go far in the corporate politics of business. Everyone will like your energy, you’ll get invited to more meetings because there’ll never be a fear you’ll ‘slow things down’ or ‘throw a spanner in the works’. But if you’re miserable enough to see everything wrong with the world you’re more likely to find something that annoys you so much you have to fix it.
Why are most businesses scared of problems? Because people who do raise their head above the parapet often get managed out for their negative attitudes. It’s easier to pretend that’s nothing wrong rather than fix or address what’s wrong. Even going through the effort of exploring and diagnosing if the problems are beyond subjective requires an admission that there could be a flaw. Businesses will put their head in the sand and say there’s nothing wrong rather than get uncomfortable. ‘You’re not under resourced, you’re just not hustling hard enough.’
But more specifically in marketing you have businesses who think everything they are doing is great. That the problems lie only in their lack of reach. They do great work they just don’t have the budgets to get audience’s attention at the scale they need to grow.
And whilst I agree that reach is the big thing and most brands are lacking it, if you’re at the point where you can’t afford to play there then there’s a bigger problem - you’re not making enough money. And if you’re not making enough money you should be applying creative a little closer to home than trying to ‘go viral’ or cheat your way to mass organic eyeballs.
THINK SMALL
So what problems closer to home are stopping people converting?
Are you a bricks and mortar store that doesn’t get enough foot traffic? Can you move your store to a better foot traffic area? Can you adjust your shop signage or front to make the value you provide clear before you start spending money on ads?
And what about when people get inside the store? Are they leaving before they see all the great things you have on offer? Could you be like Aesop and anchor me in place with a free cup of tea? Can you have in store activities or demonstrations?
There are all sorts of smaller problems brands should be looking at before they try and fix things with marketing. Because marketing is more expensive than ever, the platforms have made everything pay to play. The marketplace is crowded. What small physical things can you change in the real world?
DEFINE THE PROBLEMS
Einstein, that renowned smartie-pants, is quoted as saying that if he had an hour to solve a problem he’d spend fifty five minutes thinking of and defining the problem clearly first.
And that’s how you should be. Rather than jumping into brainstorming trending social media posts or pop up PR-able events, get together as a team and try and define every single problem your business has.
Whilst you still have the risk of employees being scared to slag things off in front of their boss, for fear they might be called negative, you can actually find out what’s wrong with a business.
What’s the sales team’s real problem? The product is too expensive? Ok. Then you need to prove the value you bring beyond your competitors.
You can’t get back to leads quick enough, there’s too much of a backlog. Ok. Then hire an extra person.
Staff turnover is too high. Ok. Why is it high? Everyone’s leaving for higher pay and better opportunities. Ok. Can we incentivise people to stay?
Everything becomes much less abstract and ‘creative’ when you’re pedantically miserable in this way. Suddenly the solutions seem less like ‘colouring in’ and more like DIY.
Because if you need to hang a picture you know you need a nail.
IS IT DONE YET?
If you’ve clearly defined the problem then you should know when it is fixed. You can measure whether your effort has had an impact. You don’t have to measure made up or juiced platform numbers.
Do people think we’re too expensive? Survey, social listen, and generally see if the sales have gone up.
We’re ‘not for men’? Stand in the stores and watch.
Our products are seen as low quality? Less returns. Better reviews. Measurable perception shift (and one would hope, more sales).
The ultimate number for whether you have fixed all your problems will be your profit line going up. But that’s only possible if you get really gritty and granular about everything that stands in your way of achieving profit.
YOUR STRATEGY IS HOW YOU SOLVE THINGS
Thinking in this way also makes our strategies and approaches more easily digestibly by those outside of marketing. We can start to speak the language of entrepreneurs or CEOs.
Where do you want your business to be?
Where is it now?
What problems stand in your way?
Your problems are what you have to solve. Your strategy is how.
We’re going to appeal to this new audience segment by X. We’re going to change our negative perception around production quality by X. We’re going to reframe our negative value perception by accepting that we can’t win on premium-ness but we can win on owning value and thus increase volume.
By the time you are presenting campaign ideas to the board it’s not a question of ‘do I like it?’ so much as a question of ‘does it solve the problems we know we have?’
BE HELPFUL
That’s the real job of a creative. Not just spotting the problems but thinking about how to fix them. A creative who can’t think about business in this way will be limited in their career, always working for someone else.
A creative team who are empowered to realise that they are the biggest asset in un-fucking business problems will be killers. They’ll be able to walk into many more rooms to help brands unclog their problems with external perspective and experiences.
So next time you have training for your creatives how do you push them to think more business-y rather than showbiz?
Can you encourage them to have a mini-apprentice style challenge to see who can actually run a business?
Can you educate the creatives in business skills the same way you train the ‘suits’ in what a good idea looks like?
Can we have more advertising courses that don’t just have copy or art direction mentors but real business leaders who know their way around a P&L?
Creatives aren’t just here to be ‘stylists’ they’re here to change the world. They just need to understand how the world actually works first.