Creative

From Data to Story to Action

Responsible creative marketing starts with data, not as an endpoint, but as the foundation for understanding who the audience is, what they need, and where relevance truly exists. That insight is then translated into a clear, compelling story: why the product matters, what makes it different, and how it delivers real value to the people it’s meant for.

When this approach is executed cohesively across channels, customers don’t experience “campaigns.” They experience a brand. Every interaction feels intentional, connected, and engaging, guiding them naturally through their journey toward a specific action without friction, noise, or forced persuasion.

"The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing." - Tom Fishburne

You must create quality content that your audience will want to engage with, and that won't end up being passed over or deleted. First, quality content needs to resonate with your identified target audience. Use language and topics that they can identify with. In other words, don't be afraid to be casual with your style. Create content around things that will give them value (educational, entertaining, or useful). Do not just give them the hard sell and keep the content visually appealing.

Creating custom content for your audience is good, but it also has to engage them. As well as thinking about your customers when creating content, focus on getting their attention. Avoid using too many spam-triggering words like discount, free, and bonus.

While all content is hopefully creative and engaging, similar to Strategy, there is a process and some fundamentals to use when gaining a consumer's attention, presenting them with USPs, and then compelling them to respond. An entire article can be written about visual psychology and advertising. Still, in short, it's the combination of a problem with a solution, self-interest, news, curiosity, claims, testimonials, demonstrability, and science. Easy peasy, right?

Once appropriately developed, it's time to deploy the creative assets (content) using tactics within the following three categories: Paid, Earned, and Owned. Not to confuse things here, but within your customer's journey, the tactics and specific actions may overlap depending on where the customer is within AIDAA.

Creative is not just art; it's science, and the deployment of your content is just as much art and science as well.

The Tactics

Paid 

These are the channels we pay for, such as display ads, social media ads, search engine marketing (SEM), and offline ads such as television and radio. Paid ads work exceptionally well when you need to develop brand equity, gain market share, and increase revenues. They provide instant results, are easy to track, give you control over the message, and can target high-intent consumers.  

Earned

Quite possibly the most rewarding category, earned is word of mouth shared by other people, such as peer reviews, review sites, social media, SEO, and unpaid publicity. Since there are no advertisements to purchase, earned tends to have the highest ROI. Earned also has a dramatic effect on brand equity by increasing credibility, brand awareness, and reach. 

Owned

Owned channels rely in some part on the direct control of the business, such as through a website, social media, and email marketing. With today's technology, pulling in traffic through owned channels has never been more productive.