The first thing I want to write about the contribution of creativity to business (I call it an abyss) is how not Pakistan-specific it is. Most marketing and brand decision-making assumes that human beings are rational thinkers. We think we would buy more if given more reasons and benefits to do so. Behavioural economics has long proven that most human decision making is emotional and more often than we would like to believe, irrational. Well, didn’t that sound academic! It is best articulated in the words of Nobel Prize winning author Daniel Kahneman, “We think we think more than we think.”

How many CMOs or marketing executives do you know who get this on a level that helps you sell your best work? How many times have you, as a CMO and marketing executive, put your confidence in creative work that makes you a little uncomfortable, but more importantly, curious and excited?

The Reason I Call It an Abyss From the Get Go

The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, commonly known as the IPA, published a global study of senior business decision makers in 2019 called The Board-Brand Rift: How Business Leaders Have Stopped Building Brands. Notably, over a third of respondents regard their own understanding of how to build strong brands as average to poor. About 40% of the sample either disagree or feel neutral about creativity’s contribution to business. To anyone who understands the power of ‘brand’, these findings should be daunting. Effective creative is measurably beneficial to business. Comparing apples to apples, the same IPA study shows that effective creative work contributes eight times more to large businesses in terms of profitability, sales, etc., compared to low performance work. These statistics, however, often become just a number on a page – momentarily arming strategists and account managers to sell creative output yet slipping right out of the client’s mind the second they develop a gut emotion about the work. It is a human reaction. Art and science both seem to fall short of convincing decision makers. Here is the abyss that we try to make sense of in our day to day.

Creativity Rendered Democratised and Nonstrategic

Creativity seems to be incrementally democratised. This again is not exclusive to Pakistan. From internal marketing teams, production houses to independent writers, conceptual thinking has started originating from many franchises outside the conventional, full-service creative agency model. Don’t get me wrong – I support democracy in most shapes and sizes. While this trend implies opportunity creation, it often removes structural thinking from the brand building process. The long-term approach through the strategic use of language and visualisation seems to go amiss. Sustained business results seem to be an afterthought when short-term projects are apparently cutting it. Short-term sales spikes, that are a mere effect of a cause, seem to be satisfying an increasing number of marketing stakeholders. Apply to that a layer of constant economic turmoil (like in Pakistan). Marketing budget cuts are prevalent and long-term thinking on ‘brand’ is losing steam. I refer you to the gazillion statistics within reach of every one of us. This quandary has a rather simple solution – understand ‘brand’.

Bringing Brands Down to Basics

Have you ever noticed someone talking about a brand, and in the very next moment, they switch to talking about ‘branding’? The shift may be slight, but hard to miss and is often detrimental to brand building. If you think you know your brand, ask yourself if you can: 1) Use one word to describe it 2) Assign a feeling to it 3) Identify its singular brand archetype. For a well-developed brand this should come naturally. Even if you feel your answers are not perfectly crisp yet (like most of mine), you should feel a strong sense of direction. Another misattribution to understanding brand and creativity for business is the onslaught of tech and targeting. Data is great, so is technology. It brings agility to the mix. Skynet is real so we should and must use it to support creative thinking. Although let’s not make tech a substitute for pure, deductive and insightful human thinking. Let’s keep it real in reading math and data sets and ask ourselves without bias if we believe what is going to be presented on a slide. Absolute confidence in your content will not fail you.

Big Data, Bigger Purpose

“More data is available more quickly, but we lose the long term outlook.” (a respondent from The Board-Brand Rift: How Business Leaders Have Stopped Building Brands). On this quest to create brands, we mine insights, but often forget to stop and look underneath the human surface of emotions. We are tackling big data and talking to voice activated assistants but losing conversation. We forget to ask if our deductions feel ‘real’ or simply, human. The purpose of advertising creativity is bigger than the textbook definition of brand purpose. In one word, it is ‘feelings.’ Use tech and data to support and ruthlessly test your instinct and be confident of your own strengths first.

When was the last time you went to the store and just… had a conversation with someone who could be your brand’s audience? I don’t mean a commissioned shopper research study (I don’t mean for you to earn stalker status in a jiffy either). In this age of ‘socials’, we are losing a classic planner/creative/writer quality – people watching. Watch, observe and learn who could be that person you want to talk to. Put it on your monthly checklist if you have to. You never know what any of those conversations could bring to your mind and work.

Take The Ocean Agency’s example from the 2018 Emmy winning documentary, Chasing Coral. With the hashtag #glowinggone and a partnership between tech-first creative businesses, Adobe Stock and Pantone, a single idea converged the brands. Pantone introduced a palette of coral reefs and launched it in tandem with Adobe Stock’s image bank sourced from the documentary. The goal was to draw attention to dying coral reefs. Artists were invited to submit independent work on conservation efforts. A purpose at heart and an idea at work; it is effectiveness on steroids in a tech-first ecosystem.

“But I Have Been Doing This for Decades– I Get Brand!”

To conclude, here is a self-awareness and brutal honesty-based checklist to test whether that is true – inspired by Julian Cole’s presentation decks and Mark Pollard’s book Strategy is Your Words.

You know those two names because you are future-forward on brand building literature

You actively remind yourself that brand health builds business over the long-term

You have sold/bought creative work that made you uncomfortable yet curious

You can describe your brand in one word/archetype

You feel confident you can explain to a five-year-old what ‘brand’ means

You have at least one brand-first project you will want to talk about 10 years later

You have shown work you are proud of to at least one parent/significant other – and you could tell they understood and loved it

Perfect scores? You are a rock star! (But let’s be honest and continue to push ourselves on brand building and creativity, shall we?)

Sarah Fahim is a planner at Ogilvy Pakistan. sara.fahim14@gmail.com