Creativity plays a big role in the marketing professions. After all, if we didn’t have all these smart folks churning up new stuff, we’d have no big ideas. Too much direct mail. No websites.
Still, I think that putting too much emphasis on personal creativity can be harmful for “creative professionals” such as copywriters, web designers, and ad folks–at least when it causes them to forget the bottom line.
## What’s the bottom line?
Sales. And I’m not talking about icky spammy sales. Rather, I mean something along the lines of what you do, every morning, when you put your clothes on: manifesting your idea of yourself to the world in order express your tastes, get noticed, and “sell” your image–in the order of priority that suits your sensibilities.
Except in this case, your job is to help a company or organization do it.
When it comes to the professional work of selling, it’s always true that your creativity exists within the bounds of someone else’s business plan.
## A word from traditional marketing.
David Ogilvy gives a great example of what I’m getting at in his book on advertising, Ogilvy on Advertising:
What is a good advertisement? An advertisement which pleases you because of its style, or an advertisement which sells the most? They are seldom the same. Go through a magazine and pick out the advertisements you like best. You will probably pick those with beautiful illustrations, or clever copy. You forget to ask yourself whether your favorite advertisements would make you want to buy the product.
If you can create ads, writing, websites, and ideas that delight and get the job done, you’ve been truly creative.
One Comment
You really hit on something here when you said, “When it comes to the professional work of selling, it’s always true that your creativity exists within the bounds of someone else’s business plan.” I think this is one of the most challenging realities for the modern worker. How can I be me, and still be in service of my company, without giving up the satisfying feeling of having and implementing a new idea? It seems to me company life can cause one to feel the world is shrinking and one’s potential for creative contribution is severely limited. Can you tell I had a bad work day? Working to carve out space for creativity is the challenge. You remind us all not to give up, as it is a key not only to personal satisfaction but to the success of any enterprise.