Invite your Customers to the Creation Process
Focus on the End-to-End Experience
Grow Customer Loyalty
Measure your Impact Creatively
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Creativity in marketing is the use of imagination and
innovation to create campaigns that resonate with
MARKETING audiences and stand out from the competition
What Creativity in
Marketing Looks Like
Today
by Mark Bonchek and Cara France
MARCH 22, 2017
What makes marketing creative? Is it more imagination or innovation? Is a creative marketer more
artist or entrepreneur? Historically, the term “marketing creative” has been associated with the
words and pictures that go into ad campaigns. But marketing, like other corporate functions, has
become more complex and rigorous. Marketers need to master data analytics, customer experience,
and product design. Do these changing roles require a new way of thinking about creativity in
marketing?
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To explore this question, we interviewed senior marketing executives across dozens of top brands.
We asked them for examples of creativity in marketing that go beyond ad campaigns and deliver
tangible value to the business. Their stories — and the five wider trends they reflect — help
illustrate what it means to be a creative marketer today.
1. Create with the customer, not just for the customer
Everyone likes to talk about being “customer-centric.” But too often this means taking better aim
with targeted campaigns. Customers today are not just consumers; they are also creators, developing
content and ideas — and encountering challenges — right along with you. Creativity in marketing
requires working with customers right from the start to weave their experiences with your efforts to
expand your company’s reach.
For example, Intuit’s marketing team spends time with self-employed people in their homes and
offices to immerse themselves in the customer’s world. Through this research, they identified a pain
point of tracking vehicle gas mileage. Based on these marketing insights, Intuit created a new feature
within its app that combines location data, Google maps, and the user’s calendar to automatically
track mileage and simplify year-end tax planning.
Brocade, a data and network solutions provider, created a “customer first” program by identifying
their top 200 customers, who account for 80% of their sales. They worked with these customers to
understand their sources of satisfaction and identify areas of strengths and weakness. Brocade then
worked with sales teams to create and deliver customized packages outlining what Brocade heard is
working or not working, and what they would do about those findings. Later, Brocade followed up
with these customers to report on progress against these objectives. The results? Brocade’s Net
Promoter Score went from 50 (already a best in class score) to 62 (one of the highest B2B scores on
record) within 18 months.
2. Invest in the end-to-end experience
Every marketer believes the customer experience is important. But most marketers only focus on the
parts of that experience under their direct control. Creative marketers take a broader view and pay
attention to the entire customer experience from end to end. This includes the product, the buying
process, the ability to provide support, and customer relationships over time. That takes time and
resources – and it also requires bringing creative thinking to unfamiliar problems.
Kaiser Permanente believes that as health care becomes more consumer-oriented, the digital
experience becomes a key differentiator. The marketing team instituted a welcome program to help
improve the experience for new plan members. Members are guided on how to register for an online
member portal, which provides access to email your doctor, refill prescriptions, make appointments,
and more. The welcome program required coordination with many areas of the business. As a result
of this program, about 60% of new members register within the first six months. These members are
2.6 times more likely to stay with Kaiser Permanente two years later.
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Like many retailers, Macy’s has traditionally spent 85% of its marketing budget on driving sales. Each
outbound communication is measured individually for immediate ROI. However, recently they
began to take a more holistic approach, focusing on lifetime value and their most profitable segment,
the “fashionable spender.” This group looks across the business to gather behind-the-scenes
information on the runway, newest clothing lines, and aspirational fashion content. The metrics also
changed. Macy’s started evaluating engagement per customer across time and platform instead of
per marketing message per day. The results? In the last year, customers in the top decile segment
increased digital engagement by 15%, cross shopping by 11% and sales by 8%.
3. Turn everyone into an advocate
In a fragmented media and social landscape, marketers can no longer reach their goals for awareness
and reputation just through paid media and PR. People are the new channel. The way to amplify
impact is by inspiring creativity in others. Treat everyone as an extension of your marketing team:
employees, partners, and even customers.
Plum Organics gives each employee business cards with coupons attached. While shopping, all
employees are encouraged to observe consumers shopping the baby category. When appropriate,
they ask a few questions about shoppers’ baby food preferences and share business cards with
coupons for free products as a gesture of appreciation.
For Equinix, surveys revealed that a third of employees were not confident explaining its company
story. The company introduced an internal ambassador program for its more than 6,000 employees.
This program gives employees across all disciplines and levels tools to educate them on the company,
its culture, products and services, and how they solve its customer’s needs. More than 20% of
employees took the training online or in workshops in the first few months of the program, and
employee submissions to its sales lead and job candidate referral programs were up 43% and 19%
respectively.
Old Navy has traditionally dedicated their media budget to TV, particularly around back to school.
However, over the past few years, they’ve focused on digital content to engage kids around positive
life experiences and giving back. Through this approach, the 2016 #MySquadContest led to 32,000
kids sharing their “squads” of friends for a chance to win an epic day with their favorite influencer,
creating 3 million video views, a 60% increase in social conversation about @OldNavy, and a 600%
increased likelihood of recommending Old Navy to a friend (versus those that viewed TV ads only). In
addition, the program led to record breaking donations for their partner, The Boys & Girls Club.
4. Bring creativity to measurement
The measurability of digital engagement means we can now know exactly what’s working and not
working. This gives marketing an opportunity to measure and manage itself in new ways. In the past,
marketing measured success by sticking to budgets and winning creative awards. Today, the ability
to measure data and adjust strategies in real-time enables marketing to prove its value to the
business in entirely new ways.
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Cisco has created a real-time, online dashboard where the entire marketing organization can look at
performance. The leadership team conducts a weekly evaluation to assess, “Is what we’re doing
working?” This analysis can be done across different digital initiatives, geographies, channels, or
even individual pieces of content. The result is an ability to quickly adjust and re-allocate resources.
Zscaler, a cloud-based security platform for businesses, created a Value Management Office. The
Office helps each client define, quantify, and track their unique business goals associated with Zscaler
implementation. Zscaler and their clients hold each other accountable to specific, measurable, time-
based results.
OpenTable recently launched a companion app just for restaurants to make better use of the data
they’ve been collecting through their reservation system. Restauranteurs can now get a handle on
their business right from their smartphone, allowing them to easily answer questions like “How did
your last shift perform?” The app can tell them if they are running light on bookings, and soon they’ll
be able to activate marketing campaigns to increase same day reservations. More than 50% of
restaurant customers on OpenTable’s cloud-based service are already using the app, visiting an
average of 9 times a day, 7 days a week.
5. Think like a startup
In the past, marketers needed to be effective managers, setting goals well in advance and then
working within budget to achieve those goals. Today, creative marketers need to operate more like
entrepreneurs, continuously adjusting to sustain “product/market fit.”
The start-up Checkr represents a trend we are seeing more of in the Bay Area in particular. Marketers
are adopting the business practices of entrepreneurs such as lean startup and agile development. For
its background check solution, Checkr wasn’t getting the results it wanted from traditional sales and
marketing tactics as it expanded into new market segments. They realized they had to think beyond
marketing as promoting an existing product. Adopting an agile method of customer testing and rapid
iteration, they worked with engineering to rethink the product and bring a “minimum viable
product” to market for these new buyers. As a result of this integrated, agile approach, the company
easily hit some early 2017 revenue targets with conversion rates that are four times what is
traditionally seen in the industry.
The changes happening in consumer behavior, technology, and media are redefining the nature of
creativity in marketing. The measure of marketing success isn’t the input, whether that’s the quality
of a piece of content or a campaign, but rather the value of the output, whether that’s revenue,
loyalty, or advocacy. Marketers of the past thought like artists, managers, and promoters. Today’s
marketers need to push themselves to think more like innovators and entrepreneurs — creating
enterprise value by engaging the whole organization, looking out for the entire customer experience,
using data to make decisions, and measuring effectiveness based on business results.
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Mark Bonchek is the Founder and CEO (Chief Epiphany Officer) of Shift Thinking. He works with leaders and organizations
to update their thinking for a digital age. Sign up for the Shift newsletter and follow Mark on Twitter at @MarkBonchek.
Cara France is CEO of The Sage Group, a firm providing marketing and consulting talent to San Francisco Bay area
companies, and founder of Marketers that Matter. Follow her on Twitter @SageCEO.
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