Creativity Before Clicks: How to Ditch Performance-Marketing Obsessions and Get Back to Brand Building

By Hemant Anant Jain, Executive Creative Director, ARGONAUT

Social media strategy dominates brands’ requests for proposals today. It’s surely no surprise considering where audience eyeballs go first. And social is targeted, measurable and cheap.

But marketers’ obsessions with social metrics is taking an industry-wide toll on agency creatives and consumer relationships with brands, leading to a loss of brand-building and a stifling of the creative edge that fuels advertising magic.

A recent global study from Havas showed that consumer trust in brands is at all-time lows, with only 47% of brands seen as trustworthy and trust metrics in worldwide decline. It also showed that 75% of brands could disappear overnight and most people wouldn’t care–or they’d simply find a replacement.

These are troubling stats in a world where customer loyalty remains a hallmark of long term success, but it’s not too late. Here’s how agencies can get back to brand building in a click-obsessed landscape.

Be nimble and have fun

The ethos of creativity remains eternal: Have fun. Be fearless. Make mistakes. Break rules. When all that goes missing, the work gets mediocre.

Great advertising has long stemmed from creating work that’s memorable–campaigns that go beyond eyeballs and reach for the hearts. Ads can be cultural touchstones, and many brands have become a part of our lives…even when the only canvas they had to tell their stories was film and print.

While the films have yielded to 15-seconds-or-less content on social, there’s a new opportunity for agencies to double down on creativity and embrace fresh thinking.

Some of today’s most compelling content comes from amateur creators who are instinctive and fearless. Nimble agencies should take cues from these creators and adopt their spirit, taking risks to create new lasting impressions instead of agonizing over engagement.

Remember and reignite agency superpowers

What makes agencies special? Expertise. Experience. Creative culture. Brilliant teams. These are superpowers that average creators don’t have at their disposal, and yet, short-term focus on performance marketing is yielding lackluster work that’s even outshined by amateur content.

Agencies can rebuild brand love, but they need to stay–and be allowed to stay–flexible and free-thinking while remembering their superpowers are right within reach. Imagine the possibilities of a modern creator’s spirit matched with an agency’s creative arsenal–the right combo can reignite great stories, create real audience connections and sell more memorably and effectively.

After all, a survey of UK adults found that, despite brand-trust decline, consumers are 55% more likely to buy a product when they love a brand story. It’s still ace brand storytelling, not just performance marketing, that drives sales.

Prioritize authenticity to build trust

Who would you trust? Someone who’s trying to sell you something, or someone who’s authentic, intuitive and relatable? Brands are no different, and authenticity–even in its rawest and most unvarnished forms–is more in demand than ever. Marketers need to recognize this, and work with agencies to ideate new ways to reintegrate brands into people’s lives and make them indelible.

Ironically, today’s plethora of platforms and tools afford that ideation process with endless possibilities, and more ways than ever to dream up and deliver memorable stories and experiences. That’s what brands should truly be selling and that’s we’ve lost sight of. But we can remember our fun, our superpowers and rekindle those memories with our clients.

And none of such memorable, long-term-shelf-life creative has anything to do with metrics goals. It’s about taking a good old-fashioned storytelling leap.

The bottom line

Times change, but the hallmarks of great advertising don’t, now matter how blindsided marketers become with performance marketing results. Now is the time for agencies to stop worrying about counting clicks and reposts, and start counting on their creative ability and agility. When that lightning strikes, the results can be immeasurable.

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