Formality Can Limit Creative Marketing – What are Your Options?

Even if you are a highly professional, technical business that manages sensitive topics on a daily basis or a bland consumer product that most folks take for granted, can you do some creative marketing to help set your business up for success? We believe so. While you might not run loose with your most out-there ideas, finding success and freedom by using some of the following tactics could help when you find yourself trying to do some creative marketing for a business that falls into this category.

Examples of creative marketing abound. Maybe the days of ad executives working on cutsie slogans and jingles, like “Where’s the beef” from the highly successful Wendy’s commercial from days gone by, don’t work as well in the digital age, but creative marketing is alive and well. You just need to think outside the box. Need a few examples to get the creative juices flowing? Here you go:

• A once-unknown brand of flour, King Arthur grew its customer base by hosting recipe contests. Now, potential customers find the flour when they search for recipes using the product, which is nearly everything you make in your kitchen.
• Dove soap is a bland, everyday product that most consumers don’t consider. They simply buy whatever’s on sale. Instead of trying to convince consumers about the superiority of the brand, Dove focused on social responsibility with its “Campaign for Real Women,” which attempted to reinforce body positivity by showing women in all shapes and sizes.
• Adobe products are very challenging, so learning them requires a significant effort. The investment of time and money (the products are very expensive) required before you can get anything useful from any of the products is substantial. To combat this, Adobe created Adobe Express with a free tier to reduce the cost. The product combines the best elements from Adobe Photoshop, Premier Pro (video editing), and Acrobat in an easy-to-learn format that doesn’t take much effort to create something the user is proud of.

Some firms may not have the kind of creative leeway that others do when considering how they present themselves. Maybe creative marketing isn’t for everyone. For instance, a law firm that specializes in medical malpractice is hardly going to use highly colorful designs, sleek logos, and memorable radio jingles to get its message across. Not only are these images in poor taste, but they violate strict advertising rules set by the Bar Association. They need prospective clients to see them as a safe pair of hands at all costs, someone you can trust when you are most vulnerable, and as such, formal professionalism takes root overall.

Creative marketing

Creative marketing involves using innovative, unconventional, or artistic approaches to promote a product, service, or brand. Here are some examples of creative marketing strategies:

Guerilla marketing

Guerrilla marketing is a relatively recent advance in creative marketing. One type of guerilla marketing involves using murals, graffiti, or sidewalk chalk to create visually stunning advertisements in public spaces. Using everyday spaces creatively is also part of guerilla marketing. For instance, placing an ad on escalator steps or creating 3D illusions on sidewalks. Domino’s Pizza used a creative marketing campaign called Paving for Pizza in 2018 to fill potholes across the country, which the company blamed for pizza deliveries with the toppings sliding off [source].

Another type of guerilla marketing involves organizing surprise performances in public places to draw attention to a brand. Flash mobs use social media to organize participants to appear at a specific time and place. Secrecy is maintained so that a group unexpectedly appears from the crowd, performs in some way (often a dance), and then disappears quickly once they are finished. Frequently, a practice session helps coordinate the performance.

To promote a product, oversized or interactive objects, like a giant coffee cup or a large pair of sunglasses, are placed in cities to promote a brand.

Interactive marketing

Interactive marketing might involve augmented reality (AR), which allows prospective buyers to visualize products in their homes or tour a tourist attraction virtually with the help of virtual reality (VR). Another alternative is gamification, which consists of creating games with prizes for the winners. Frequently, sporting events and other events that draw a large number of participants from varied backgrounds feature games where brands ask attendees to perform games of skill or chance or engage in fun activities while featuring the brand prominently. A basketball game might feature an audience member trying to get a basket from a long distance to win a cash prize in hopes of more prominent media coverage.

Experiential marketing

Experiential marketing allows prospective buyers to take products for a test drive. For instance, samplings, product demonstrations, or live experiences, such as a team of women pilots speeding over a stadium or folks parachuting in, are good examples.

Cause marketing and innovative partnerships

Co-branding is a common form of creative marketing. For instance, Chiquita banana-flavored Popcycles.

Cause marketing is a popular type of creative marketing. Increasingly, consumers worldwide consider the social responsibility of brands when making purchase decisions, and above, you see the causes most important to Gen Z consumers in the US. Brands understand this and use it in their creative marketing efforts. Thus, brands can work with a non-profit to encourage consumers to buy from the brand. Tom’s Shoes donates a pair of shoes for each pair purchased by a consumer. This tactic was so successful that a sock company is trying the same approach and a competing shoe company (Bob’s) donates to animal shelters for each pair purchased.

Nostalgia marketing

Retro-themed campaigns sometimes involve re-releasing classic products or embracing vintage aesthetics to appeal to older audiences or tap into generational nostalgia. For instance, Coke periodically brings back an old ad that features children representing different ethnic groups singing, I want to teach the world to sing around Christmas.” They also like to feature ads with the family enjoying dinner together, which looks like it’s right out of a Norman Rockwell print.

Make technical data interesting & accessible

You don’t always have to be hyper-promotional to impart an interesting fact that relates to your business, with the benefit of marketing it through that lens. In fact, social media and digital media, in general, work best if 80% to 90% of your content focuses on solving consumer problems rather than promoting your product.

If your work involves presenting data or technical concepts, you could plan how to make it easier to understand. A clean infographic or a short, straightforward video can often do the job better than a dense report – for instance, think of how a luxury fishing brand could use a video shoot to show how to cast the cleanest line and the intricacies of the new design that makes it possible. This way, the consumer gains some value from the video while at the same time, the brand promotes its products and demonstrates its superiority. This can work for highly formal brands, too.

Sell authoritative expertise

Providing information can work well. It might showcase your industry understanding of Leica digital pathology, share case studies, testimonials, or even well-reasoned blog posts about legal concepts that a possible client may be interested in. This helps to break down your field in layman’s terms and can be very effective.

That’s because if your audience can see you’re knowledgeable and capable of solving their problems, they’ll feel more comfortable coming to you. That confidence can overwrite a thousand witty taglines you may have substituted.

Understand your audience & talk to them

Even highly technical and formal businesses need to understand the people they serve. Formal or not, people are people, and no matter what they come to your company for, they need to feel as though you’re speaking to them and not at them. Don’t get lost in your field’s technicalities and forget about the real people affected by your work.

It’s wise to think about your audience’s priorities. For example, a medical malpractice firm might explain how they approach cases with compassion or how they fight for fair outcomes despite the pressure of the medical industry. This kind of direct, human approach helps people feel seen and understood, which is the first step towards their onboarding as clients.

Conclusion

Creative marketing is something any business can use, even those that involve technically complex issues or professional expertise. These are just a few ways you can use marketing creatively to support your growth and success.

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