Using creativity to grow successful businesses and brands
In this difficult economic time many businesses feel they can’t justify ramping up their communication strategies and marketing more creatively.
Yet as the lead article in the March/April NZ Marketing magazine is at pains to point out, “the companies most tenacious in their pursuit of creativity have been the ones outperforming the stock market and enjoying historic periods of financial prosperity”.
The trifecta of:
- creatively led management
- creative marketing
- financial growth
appear consistently when looking closely at the results of advertisers who have had prestigious wins at the Cannes Advertiser of the Year Awards since 2000, according to the article’s author James Hurman of Colenso BBDO.
The article profiles the stock market performance of winners over the last 9 years, which include names well known to most Kiwis; the likes of Volkswagen, Honda, Adidas, Nike and Sony. Even when times were touch and other big names were loosing value on the stock market hand over fist, those that combined creative leadership with creative marketing appeared to insulate themselves to a greater extent than those that didn’t.
Creativity and financial growth – is this just a coincidence?
Normally I’d criticise advertisers who are convinced by their agencies to sign off on overly creative campaigns that seem to do nothing but showcase how clever the designers are – and those nonsense Cadbury ads featuring the crazy eyebrow kids comes instantly to mind. But happily for all designers, there is more than just coincidence when it comes to creativity and financial growth.
We can look closer to home to see the same phenomena occurring with local companies. Whittaker’s have always taken a slightly off beat approach to their advertising (‘batch roasting‘ in a bach – only Kiwis would get that!), and lately have been able to creatively cash in on the mistakes of their behemoth competitor, Cadbury.
Those old enough will remember the Toyota ‘Bugger’ ads which helped to popularise the Toyota Hilux brand in the NZ market in the 1990s ahead of it competitors. Twenty years later and I still remember the ad – and the brand too! Quite a feat when often the creativity or novelty is remembered but the brand isn’t.
Lately of course, as James Hurman of Colenso BBDO points out in his NZ Marketing article, we can look to Air NZ as an example where creativity at corporate level, and externally in their marketing, has combined to position the company well ahead of its lower cost competitors.
More than just a luxury
Unless you operate in a monopoly, creativity is not a luxury to be shelved during hard times but a real strategy for growing company profits and insulating a business or product against a downward economy. It certainly makes for a better strategy than price cutting!
Posted on March 10th, 2010 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: Environmental | No Comments »
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