Thoughts

No, not that creation story or in fact anything related to religious belief systems and the origins of our existence. We are going to look at the story of creativity in marketing. Think about an advert that you have seen at some point in your life, think about a brand that you actually like – what is driving that memory and that affection? It’s almost certain that, in the case of the advert, it isn’t the particular place or time that you saw it, say the TV or a bus stop at 10pm. Nor, in the case of the brand, is it likely to be the core benefit of the product the brand provides, after all the commodity provides that too. It’s something else. Something less tangible, more difficult to quantify but no less powerful for it.

Search your soul and you will find that the reason you remember these specific things is creativity.

In a recent article called ‘Decisions, Decisions’, I wrote about research that enlightens us about how humans make decisions and how influencing those processes are really what branding is all about. Powerful stuff. The research, not the writing. In this article I’d like to write about some more powerful stuff. Not how humans make decisions but why they behave the way they do to get what they want. More powerful stuff wouldn’t you say?

Let’s start with a question.

Even some of the most enlightened and cool people I know talk about marketing as ‘getting the crayons out’ which, with the exception of one case, demonstrates that they don’t really get it.

Then there is the even more esoteric area of marketing known as branding, which brings a far away stare to the face of many a senior leader in pharmacy.