Insights:Disciplined creativity

Let’s be honest. Everybody has the ability to be creative. People outside of marketing and other creative fields are completely capable of coming up with engaging, enchanting and/or endearing ideas. So why does the “non-creative” business world put such value in hiring companies whose key selling point is being creative?

It all comes down to disciplined creativity. The ability to construct engaging, enchanting and/or endearing ideas that do more than engage, enchant and/or endear.

Creating a message that resonates with the target market while staying true to the DNA of the brand being advertised is the real challenge.

At Insight Marketing Design really great ideas go in the trash can all the time because they’re not right for the brand we’re working on. They may be attention- getting or deeply insightful, but if the idea doesn’t reflect the brand in the consumer’s mind, then it really wasn’t great to begin with and ultimately belongs in the circular file.

Of course, we all see mountains of ads that obviously were not created with disciplined creativity. Which is what makes the ones that were standout even more. A quick test to see if an ad is true to a brand is to cover the logo (usually at the bottom of the page) and see if you can guess what brand it is for. Even if you guess wrong, once you know what the brand is, ask yourself if it feels authentic to that company. Some ads go so far afield, you may just want to try to guess what product they’re selling.

It may seem a little counterintuitive to stress the importance of discipline in a field that is known and rewarded for the free-flowing, rainbow riding, flights of fancy nature of creativity. But without the discipline to make it mesh with the brand’s essence it’s just (if you’re lucky) clever. And being clever for clever’s sake doesn’t make cash registers ring.

Click here to see disciplined creativity in action. –