Many companies think creativity means throwing money into marketing efforts and giving lip service to “out of the box” thinking, but such efforts rarely have a positive impact on the bottom line. On July 18, Harvard Businness School Press, Boston, released a new publication by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn outlining a disciplined approach to building creativity actively into the organizational culture, and leveraging that creativity into campaigns that deliver measurable results.
In Jucing the Orange, How to Turn Creativity Into A Powerful Business Advantage, the authors show that bankable, creative ideas come from zeroing in on the one key business problem that must be solved, and then rigorously unearthing insights that will lead to a spectacular solution.
Behind-the-scenes stories of successful and failed campaigns for companies in diverse industries reveal the core secrets of training for creativity: develop a proprietary brand emotion, offer big ideas without a big budget, and get customers to seek out the message.
One case study of a successful promotion deals with a barbershop that did not have the budget for a traditional campaign, which typically involves hair models, stylists and professional photographers. The creative team decided to use photos of famous people with bad haircusts combined with a clever caption. For example, a disheveled-looking Albert Einstein appears in one ad featuring the headline “A bad haircut can make anyone look dumb.” The ads were so popular they were frequently stolen, and business for the barbershop increased significantly.
Fallon and Senn believe in unconventional marketing using unconventional channels backed up by insightful research, rigorous strategy and the right execution. They suggest seven guiding principles to increase success rates in solving marketing and branding problems:
1. Always start from scratch.
2. Demand a ruthlessly simple definition of the business problem.
3. Discover a proprietary emotion.
4. Focus on the size of the idea; not the size of the budget.
5. Seek out strategic risks.
6. Collaborate or perish.
7. Listen hard to your customers. Then, listen some more.
For more information, visit www.hbspress.org, call (617) 783-7650 or e-mail tberman@hbsp.harvard.edu.
- People:
- Fred Senn
- Pat Fallon
- Places:
- Boston