PM360 Great Creative 2010

IT'S NOT YOUR FATHER'S GREAT CREATIVE
By Abby Mansfield, VP/Creative Director, Topin & Associates, Inc. 

Probably the best way to describe great creative doesn’t use the overused language of “break-through,” “arresting,” “memorable.” In today’s overstimulated, over-communicated world, great creative simply has to do more.  

The first job of creative, both yesterday and today, has always been to connect with the audience. A great campaign takes a brand with a specific data set or list of features and gives it meaning that’s somehow special and unique to the audience. It makes the audience think “You get me.”

Yeah, so what’s new? 
The big difference between yesterday and today, however, is how a great idea connects. We’re past the days of the great brand icon executed in gorgeous print ads, POA after POA of detail aids, and great convention floor displays. As much as it pains me as a copywriter to say this, you need a lot more than a great headline or a single inventive visual to get the job done. You need campaigns that can extend, adapt, and add the depth that’s needed by today’s multichannel world. To borrow a buzzword, great campaigns need content.  
Why? Your audience isn’t in the same place that it used to be (remember, there was no such thing as YouTube five years ago). Sales rep access to physicians is falling. Convention attendance is down, at least for the moment. Both physicians and patients aren’t paying attention to just one or two types of media, but lots. So your idea has got to be able to turn itself upside down and inside out in order to be available through whatever channels your audience is interested in.  

An idea has to not only connect with your target, but also connect your targets 
We’ve been hearing this now for a while: Marketing is no longer a one-way conversation between a brand and its customer. It’s a many-way exchange: brand to customer, customer to brand, and customer to customer. The Internet has created word-of-mouth on steroids. Good brands get passed along, recommended, shared, and blogged about. (So do bad ones, too, obviously.) Ideas that create the ability for physicians and patients to connect and share information can take true advantage of this new dynamic.  

Great creative isn’t necessarily the sole job of the creative department anymore. In a way, today’s exploding new media has raised the stakes for the people charged with creating big ideas. Today’s ideas require more than a way with words or an art director’s genius. They require a grounding in and basic understanding of new media strategy and technologies. They demand people who don’t just think in print ads and how they may look as Web home pages. They beg for more collaborative, more inclusive idea generation within agencies. And on the client’s end, they require a willingness to try something new knowing that it may not work.  

We need a shift in approach. Now let’s not panic. We don’t need to throw out everything and everyone we know to adapt our thinking to today’s environment and customer. Communications agencies and client marketing departments are filled with bright, creative people. And at the heart of every great campaign is always a great idea—a great selling idea, not simply a great advertising idea.  

What we may need, however, is to shift how we approach finding creative solutions. Many of us still think in print campaigns then work from there. What if we talked less about what our brand can say and what our brand can feel like, and more about what our brand can do—to fit into patients’ lives or physicians’ practices in a way that connects to them on a more personal level? What if we asked our creative people to come to us with a Web site as the core communications element, rather than a detail aid?

What if we put journal advertising dead last on our list of prioritized tactics?
We’ll still get ideas that are great creatively—ideas that sound great, look terrific, and break through today’s clutter. But what we’ll also get are ideas that are bigger, deeper, and even more likely to make that magical connection.

Growing a Healthy Line of Prenatal Products
One of the campaigns we’re most proud of at the agency is the CitraNatal Assure launch campaign. Why? Sure it looks great and is on strategy…but we’re proud of it because it worked really well.

The “Baby Them Both” campaign, based on CitraNatal’s positioning as a gentle formulation, integrated professional, consumer, traditional, and digital tactics to grow the total CitraNatal line by 35% in one year. More importantly, perhaps, the brand was able to capitalize on a competitor’s departure from the market, moving from the No. 5 to the No. 2 prescription prenatal brand. That’s impact.