Standard Creativity

An oxymoron or the truth of marketers? -Avinash Srivastava

According to most people, being creative is a prerequisite to being a marketer I wonder if it is this general belief that leads to the marketing team becoming the “arts and crafts” department instead of a strategic business function in most companies.

I also started my career in Marketing with this idea- I have to be creative. A writer at heart, my job in Content Marketing at a B2B SaaS startup had limited avenues for me to show my true potential- but I did my best to display the same, every time I had the opportunity to do so

From wordplay in blog titles to the use of alliteration on creatives- I did everything, hoping to stand out, only to hear one or more versions of the following:

"This is not consistent with our brand voice ” This will not resonate with our target audience ” "Let’s get rid of all the extra stuff- keep it simple and straightforward ”

“This much creativity on your presentation is an example of death by design”

So much for creativity- wouldn’t you say?

So here I am, telling you from my real-life experience as a marketer, Creativity does not always work in Marketing

In fact, if you may so allow me to draw the analogy (since this one is a creative piece), creativity follows the same trajectory as love in the quote: “You don’t love them. You just love the idea of them”

Most people do not appreciate creativity, because real creativity is sometimes even difficult to make out What people like, is a creative element that they can easily identify (and feel good about).

Flashy design, colors, unique and catchy headlines, once in a blue moon- that sort of stuff. Fact, here are a list of times when being creative is bad instead of good (especially for marketers):

1..When you are working on a client presentation and your creativity takes the content so much away from the original idea that the client starts complaining that the presentation does not feel like their own.