How to be a great creative person

When you hear something creative, there are probably many good ideas that come to mind in many people's minds. For example, McDonald's "rocking baby" ads, in which the baby can not see the changes in the identity of McDonald's logo, people will always remember. 2011 Carlsberg cinema marketing case "brawny with you to watch the movie," so many people are surprised. Creative word is often mentioned in advertising design, advertising works directly to customers, if not creative will not be attractive in the digital marketing comes, many companies start to try new elements of promotion, but also make advertising , Spread very good results.

2011 Victoria's Secret (Victoria's Secret) released his underwear ads, brought Victoria's secret, the beauty of ah wear less ah What the impression immediately hovered in my mind for a long time lingering. And Victoria's secret knows how to earn the eyeball. Street placed a large group of sexy enchanting beauty billboards, advertisers with two-dimensional code to block the beauty of the key parts, is not a lot of people impatient, there is no infinite reverie? Tips for people to use mobile scanning to block the key parts Those two-dimensional code, you can get the full version of beauty photos.

This interactive ad stimulates everyone's participation and can be shared even on smartphones. Nowadays, when we do something creative, it's much more interesting to use interactive QR codes to extend the reach of interactive marketing, for example, to become part of the game, or to create purchases through offers. It reminds me of Turkish Airlines playing a "Olympic Treasure Hunt" game with consumers in two-dimensional code during the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Users can find free tickets by looking for the QR code. Turkish Airlines will be 73 Olympic Games participating countries flag made into two-dimensional code, respectively, to the London bus station 94, and then invite people to "treasure hunt": Participants simply find the "hidden" at the bus station two-dimensional code and use mobile phones Scan, you can get a national flag, and by virtue of the national flag in the Turkish Airlines mobile website to form an automatic registration. Finally, those who collect the most flags can get a free round-trip ticket from any of the more than 200 Turkish Airlines global routes. Turkish Airlines started promoting the campaign on Facebook and Twitter from July 30th. The event started on August 3 and ended on the 19th.

Turkish Airlines's interactive marketing of this Olympic treasure hunt has its originality in the form of Victoria's Secret, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and other companies. Its core point lies in the combination of virtuality and entity. At the same time, by setting the rules of interactive games , Transforming participants into potential users of Turkish Airlines. Taking advantage of the London Olympics, tourists from all over the world flocked to London during this period to collect flag flags using two-dimensional codes and further exploited the hot topic of "national consciousness" so that people of all nationalities wanted to collect themselves The flag of the country, so that their own countries and participants can get the highest score, this is like an "unofficial Olympics." However, we should be cautious in using "national consciousness," and may not end up being politically charged.

Talking about the case, what is "creative"?

Creativity is short for creating a sense of consciousness or innovation. It refers to a new abstract thinking and behavior potential derived from the understanding and cognition of the existing reality. It is a combination of ideas, ideas, desires, souls, favors, interesting, stories, emotions, fresh combinations, brand new relationships, weird, verbal, critical ... understanding from words, Create "- innovation, creation, creation ... ... will promote social and economic development. "Meaning" - awareness, ideas, wisdom, thinking ...

When we define a strategy for a company's product or brand, what follows is a way to come up with ideas based on this strategy. How does a creative idea fit and can be a hit?

The first step, the collection of elements: Creative is a collection of many elements scattered all over the concrete embodiment of a comprehensive element, professional elements, product elements. As for what we leave or discard in the creative process, we are concerned with the proposed strategy and user.

Comprehensive elements can be seen as the basis for marketing people to do creative, it is the social sciences, logical thinking, a collection of various knowledge. For example, we want to do an event for the new product marketing, brand users like the trend, the novelty of content, in the creative thinking process, if you collect a lot of elements, including what can represent the trend, pop music, or trendy electronic, or Skateboarding and more. There are many ways of logical thinking, such as comparative thinking, causal thinking, recursive thinking, and reverse thinking, which are personal habits and can be learned and mastered. Personally, I prefer to use comparative law, and many times in the beginning Use this method to collect elements, here reminds me of a little story, called the classic case of the use of comparative thinking. In Hong Kong, there is a glue shop in the introduction of a new type of "all-powerful adhesive," the market there are a variety of different types of "all-purpose plastic." The boss decided to start with advertising, after research found that almost all the "all-purpose plastic" ads are the same. So he came up with a distinctive, ingenuity "advertisement", a thousand dollars worth of gold glued on the wall in front of the store, and said that who can hand to the gold coins pull down Who gave this piece of gold? Sure enough, this ad attracted many people's attempts and onlookers, played a "sensation" effect. Although no one can manually cut that piece of gold, but into the store to buy "all-powerful adhesive," but people are increasing.

Another professional element is the general knowledge of marketing, advertising knowledge, methods of association, such as we do for an e-commerce Double 11 promotions creative, in this regard we should understand the professional knowledge of e-commerce promotion, product features, logistics capabilities, services Process, etc. At the same time, some marketing, advertising rules can not be ignored, what kind of advertising can be put on, what kind of promotional content does not involve illegal and so on, these may become an important element of your creativity.

Finally, talk about product elements, starting from the product, we consider the product's marketing goals, selling points, consumer target group, support points, value associations, etc., is like the difference between this cup of coffee and another cup of coffee How to accurately describe a taxi driver How can we find him precisely? This is how we collect elements, and it is also the first job of training us to become creative people.

The second step, the elements of the association: the elements collected to organize, research, arranging puzzles, trying to do a new combination of ways, it can be said that there is no use of knowledge put there, if we do not put into practice the knowledge, Not reflect the value of a person, so do marketing creative, systematic knowledge and things to be combined, this association will bring new discoveries.

We still take the electricity supplier as an example. Before October 11, the elements we have collected have several types of product promotion plans. The competing products also launch promotional activities with such gimmicks as 0 yuan and gifts for purchase. There are many single men and women holding blind date in the Singles Day Activities, the electricity supplier has also been the lowest point of publicity point, the logistics link is very good, single dating like where to go, like to use what, street unfamiliar, WeChat ... ... Some of the elements in front of us, how the combination? Associated?

Here are a few related principles, similarities, surprises, inevitability, in the storm of creativity, the creative elements can be written on the whiteboard to discuss the portfolio, you can also group the association, and finally tell their own association result.

The third step, creative incubation: This session has become rich and interesting, when we put together a number of related results to discuss one by one, remove less than good content, and even in the creative element can be optimized, which is A digestion process, this process maybe you will spell out a good idea.

The fourth step, the creative flashes: We often pour a good idea, and even exclaimed exclaimed, there is a suddenly surging, Emotional feeling, the idea is the same, when we find that after the first three links brewing Brewing and then brewing, erupted in an instant, and sometimes the small universe is a feeling of impotence, through the first three links or in the daily individual, the accumulation of creative team accumulation, brainstorming will be stimulated to produce new ideas . Let's take a look at the chain of events for our new portfolio with the ecommerce Double Eleven promotion:

Creativity is like telling a story and designing different episodes. Perhaps this event chain was a single affair in WeChat, joining a "stripping action" on the same day, and he started dating and found himself missing a date Essential goods, began to prepare for shopping, then saw the essential goods promotion information, wow! The original or an unprecedented low price, after the order, the second delivery service to resolve the lack of essential goods at night embarrassed!

In a variety of elements, found a plot that can be related to each other, this should be a source of creativity, when we fill in all aspects of the content has become an idea.

The fifth step, creative polish: In this process is an idea implemented, sometimes creativity can be abstract, but when we finally need to consider many factors, the first creative must meet the specific conditions of the product, marketing Goals and other actual needs, but also consider the marketing budget, production costs, process cycles, etc., followed by the enforceability is not implemented after the idea is very difficult to implement? Another point is that the formation of creative to meet the characteristics of socialized people, For example to be interesting. Finally, do not forget to embody the marketing message in your creative presentation.

What is the idea of ​​the last e-commerce Double 11?

2012 Double XI, we serve an e-commerce service and launch a Durex 11 Yuan snap-up in its products, which is exclusively for WeChat subscribers. This promotion draws much attention in WeChat and Weibo, and the content of the copy spread naturally Seductive, orders are generated within ten minutes of the start of transmission.

Creative, as the highlight of marketing, the life of advertising, we have experienced a creative production process, the creative gravitation - "relevance", the original driving force of creativity - "interest" and creativity through the "five steps" above. Raw materials - "elements", the creative expression - "combination", creative out of the street - "carving", such a creative approach is not everyone can learn? Answer is yes, as long as we carefully. Mr. Lai Shengchuan said: "Everyone has creative energy, creativity is not a talented patent, creativity is trained."

In the digital marketing campaign, locked-in users, and put forward strategies, can surprisingly win is creative, it can no longer behave in this respect, can have a disruptive, in the "I and my companions are shocked" after the generation Brand, product recognition, recognition, creativity is to promote marketing events, activities become the target participants shines, or even be attracted, in this regard need creative people to pay.

We talk about the difference between creative people and ordinary people to see things, simply that there is no relevance, ordinary people look at everything, but isolated knowledge points, islands, unable to find the relevance of things. However, creative people, in every case regard it as a link in the entire knowledge chain, can be related to each other, such as tigers, leaves, white clouds, looking at the three keywords seems unrelated, but we can use a variety of Ways to make associations: comparison, exaggeration, metaphor, size, proportion, partial, repetition, omission, grafting, story ......

We have a creative approach, the actual combat marketing can go its own play, friends who work in Party B will be deeply touched, often participate in various than draft, fight resources, fight team, spell strategy, fight the price, there is a very Important, is to fight creativity. In the course of dozens of minutes of proposals, your logic is not clear, the idea is not enough bright enough, have seized the heart of the bidder? As the first party, but also value the idea, in all kinds of markets Promote the tender, the promotion of brand awareness, market share, sales and other goals is the most common, then the correct strategy, there is a good idea at least have the opportunity to achieve this goal.

We know the importance of creativity, it may bring us a lot of unexpected things, but in the creative process, some of the principles deserve our attention:

1. We need to find a simple, straightforward way to find out the core of creativity: Some insignificant information needs to be removed from the elements, especially in the process of creativity, just like hatching and carving in the "Five Steps".

2, to break the routine, surprises the creative surprise: If we think in accordance with the normal way of thinking people thinking, it has become useless, or simply can not arouse people's enthusiasm for participation, that creativity is a failure, we need to stimulate users in the creative You need to be different, you need to subvert, just like our living environment, when we stay there for a long time, become a habit, do not feel fresh, when one day changed the position of furniture, unexpected surprises Came. The same goes for creative marketing.

3, creative ground gas: When we implement from strategy to creativity, more abstract concepts, the model has become a concrete manifestation of the creative need to understand, remember to live, grounded!

4, credible ideas to make the brand more reliable: Why do people believe you do marketing events do? Let others believe that it is indeed an easy task. What's more, the newly introduced laws of network rumors qualitatively and unscrupulously all kinds of speculation have obviously been shotgun, credible as a principle of creativity, then we need to strictly control the element collection stage, all kinds of elements Credibility needs to be considered, all the realistic details of the creative chain need to be carefully scrutinized, so creative ideas will be more credible!

5, into a little emotion, more creative ideas: Let others care more about our creativity. In one such case, John Caples wrote a title for an ad in 1925, an ad that advertised a music correspondence course for the American Conservatory of Music. After that, he wrote a commendable slogan: "When I sat in front of the piano, they all laughed at me, but when I started playing ..." This title successfully sells correspondence courses and becomes Advertising buzzwords. Later, Larry Zeit asked Kaples why emphasize social benefits, not just the advantages of selling courses, John Caps replied, "You do not understand, learning the piano is a very difficult thing, you can not think of it as Selling points, but you can sell the idea of ​​social success, as well as to overcome any defect in order to become so accomplished. "

6, Like a story telling creative: the power of the story is very strong, many people are willing to listen to some stories, but do not want to see old-fashioned instructions, rules. However, in the creative process can find inspirational stories, our ideas can tell the story of the same way, the user can find their own relevance, to stimulate the user to take action.

7, do not embrace a creative and amused: When we find a thought of creativity, will be very excited, but in our actual combat, often can not hold only one idea, can be increased to two or three, but other ideas are not Spare, the same is your crafted boutique, so good that they can not be weighed which of the best, this time you will be surprised to find that doing so will make you think about something you never thought before, you will inevitably find the New World.

The above principles have helped us to create ideas. We will avoid taking detours and creative topics. Finally, I would like to recommend a few tools for everyone. It would be helpful to those who have been studying and have been struggling with no creativity.

The first is brainstorming: Focusing on the wisdom of everyone for a short period of time, teams are much more powerful than individuals. Brainstorming has four key points, seeking quantity, not criticism, briefness, asking everyone. Some tools and methods are also used when brainstorming ideas, such as questioning, decision tree, attribute categorization, forced sorting, post-it notes and more.

Another is the mind map: is an effective mode of thinking, used in memory, learning, thinking and other thinking "map", which will help spread the mind of the human mind. Mind mapping is a way to visualize radioactive thinking. There are many benefits to our collection of elements and combinations. The details of how to use it are not described here. Interested friends can join the specialized mind mapping community to learn, Buy the appropriate books.

For so many years of marketing work, most of the time dealing with creativity, I am willing to collect all kinds of elements, usually has developed a habit, I will put some similar information, pictures and other information together, see a good outdoor advertising , Will readily take down, some electronic versions, and some are derived from newspapers and magazines, etc., regardless of the kind of medium, in short, we put together these raw materials, when we want to make a marketing plan for a product, creative ideas will Emergence, which takes some time to accumulate, in addition to the process of accumulation of individuals, the steps described here, principles, tools, are creative practical training.