Even when you have a great strategy, great products, and great messages to deliver but how you are delivering your message does matter among all these flood of messages floating all around us. Every message is trying to get our attention so delivering your message creatively that stands out is vital.

You might have heard marketing people say this before, ‘content is king’. I concur. However, aesthetics has the same importance as content. Compelling content and appealing aesthetics – both requires cultivation and time. If you are determined to winning the attention game then both goes hand in hand like a royal couple.

To stand out in a crowd, creativity is the key. Imagine this: what if you have added some great product or great message but have not change the look-&-feel of your company website? It might fail to gain the client’s attention. But if you approach with ‘the big bang of creativity’; a new fresh look of your company website then your website will not go unnoticed. After all, that is the ultimate goal your marketing team might try to achieve, which is to stand out against the competition.

Clients should remember your company’s name over others. If you’ve asked to provide a company name about the specific product then how many names do you remember which offers similar features and benefits? Just one or two, correct? You want your company to be one of them. The average human brain can only store limited information. Creative can help you achieve the success and excellence you strive for.

Let me give you an example of banking industry. Few years back marketing team of this bank came up with the strategy to talk about their products that their bank offers. For example we have product A if are single mom, we have product B if you are first time home buyer, we have product C if you want to invest in your kid’s 529, and we have product D if you want a loan, etc. The statistics indicated that this bank’s rank was falling. They realized that it was time to define a new strategy to gain their clients back. Instead of talking about products, the newer strategy they came up with is to talk about the clients’ circumstances and emotions. The various research methods made it clear how important it is to attract clients to you instead of pushing yourself to them. Every client’s have different types of challenges or struggles in their lives such as single mom have her own challenges raising kids and financial shortfalls, a person who lost his job and worries about paying bills and mortgage, etc. The ’emotional design’ played role here, which became a powerful tool in creating exceptional user experience. They started building stories around various scenarios, added persona to this story along with the creative touch. Along with the content strategy, they revolutionized their aesthetics. They changed the entire look-&-feel of their brand in all the channels such as TV, radio, online, Social media, etc. Today, the stakeholders are celebrating their record-breaking quarter after another. This was just one of the examples but we have seen transformation through aesthetics in many big brands such as coke, Pepsi, etc.

Content and creative should be a part of any marketing strategy. The problem is that creative development starts after decisions have made about creating a new strategy or message. Actually, creative development should start at the same time when you start to plan and discuss to build a new strategy.

I am not saying there are no challenges to incorporate strategy and creative at the same time in an early stage in the process. There are so many moving pieces are involved that sometime strategies completely changes compares to the early stage of strategic briefing document. One needs to be very flexible while working with the multifunctional team. Every team in your company from marketing to product team should meet their needs.