4 things marketing directors do that stifles creativity

🍃This week I’m talking about creativity + marketing. Whilst marketers rely on the creative juice of experts (agencies), there are moments when they need their lovely creative mind to produce wonders. Creativity gets kills more than it gets supported these days. Let’s dive in, shall we?

🍃For the marketer who needs to find an idea:

Creativity is not just where art is. Creativity isn’t When you are looking for the next big idea, or strategy for your brand, here is the happy triad you need to stimulate creativity at work:

• Expertise
• Creative thinking skills
• Motivation

And in order to create an environment where they can all co-exist, here’s 3 things you can do:

• Learning in and outside of your domain.

Being a top-notch marketer isn’t enough, my friend. Learning outside of your brand planet is crucial. Why? Because it helps you see connections, link dots – which could lead to a eureka moment, a breakthrough.

Say your portfolio is a high end range of wines. Don’t just think of looking at your look-alike competitor. Leave your office, go to Selfridges and browse the premium aisles: check signature clothing brands, premium beauty brands, go check Harrods, have a wander in Fortnum & Mason and simply get inspirations from what these high end brands do, how they look like, what are the cues they’re using on their design, how they package their goods, what USP they have etc… Spend a full day out there. Take photos, take notes, and bring it all back in the office. You’ll connect dots, you’ll notice opportunities and you’ll think with a more creative mind than simply looking at other win brands on Google, or the wine aisle.

• To think well, know what depletes you of energy and what brings you energy.

If a blank sheet of paper, or an empty slide or an annoyingly loud colleague disturbs your concentration, simply use another technique that involves using other kinds of visual stimulation (going on a walk, listening to a podcast relating to your goal, use a brainstorm template (so many are free and available), chat to someone to get input on your ideas or brainstorm, scribble, use images to define your vision…). We are all different, we are stimulated by various things. Whilst your organisation may have a process well defined and oiled up for you to follow, please, please, please, think about the times when you got most creative (where were you, what were you doing, what were you surrounded with, what wasn’t there…) and try to recreate this.

• You’ll have the drive to do that thing if you find it particularly interesting, satisfying, personally challenging or enjoyable.

What is this thing? How do you know it is it, and when it isn’t? What can you talk to someone about for hours. What would you be happy to research quite in depth online, in books, talking to people… What, in the past years, has made you reluctantly go to work to do it, what aspects of it did you least enjoy and why?

Learning yourself is such a key step in your leadership journey and marketing job. Spend time answering these questions. Know what you need, and what you do not need. You might not always be able to have it all, but at least you know what to aim for!

🍃For the marketing director who wants to encourage great ideas:

Your behaviour that undermines creativity of your team is more natural than the behaviour that stimulates it. Yup, read this again. It is therefore essential that you work on your self-awareness. Not just you, in fact, your team, the department, the whole organisation.

So whilst being mindful of what you may be naturally doing that stifles creativity, do the opposite of this:

• Excessive constraint: say your team needs to come up with new ideas or solve complicated problems in new ways. They need autonomy. Instead, your challenge will be to let go of the command-and-control. Let them do the brief their way.

• Meaningless work: your team tends to do their most creative work when their work contributes to something that matters to them. If far from meaningful, it’s too difficult for them to stay motivated and creative. You might not even realise how important is your role in making them understand the importance of their work. What may seem like a mundane task to them might be critical to the brand plan. Usually, more junior marketers think of the multi-million pound TV campaign as the sign of success and pride in their job. Managing forecasts and working with excel spreadsheet on insights sometimes needs to brought to a different light by someone like you, who’s got experience and knows.

• A status quo bias. That’s when you talk about creativity & also innovation like it’s the holy grail, however you’re really suspiscious of new ideas. New ideas may be evaluated harshly, cut to pieces, and people see this as a much louder noise than anything they can read as “Embracing creativity & innovation pioneers” in a mission statement! 

• Risk aversion. AKA psychological safety. If your marketing team feels free to speak up with new ideas, even if these ideas are far-stretched, you’ve got it – when they feel safe to call out errors in their own work (or other people’s), knowing no one will get fired or shut down because they’ve tried something new and failed. 

🍃Because innovation and creativity are linked to failures. 

Talk to any athlete, business superman, inventor: they’ve all failed at times. Because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have tried hard enough.

Don’t tell me about your success. Tell me about your failures, and I’ll then understand your success.

🍃Do you know if you have a management style that stifles creativity?

Our mind goes into well-known traps, and we barely even notice it. For example, you may be showing people-pleasing tendencies when being triggered, which does impact the environment you create for your team’s creativity!

If you're interested in identifying it, simply message me! 

I’m Mags

16 years of FMCG marketing & leadership experience in Unilever, Colgate, Reckitt, Lindt & Sprungli, Henkel.

My confidence and skills as a leader really took off when I stopped thinking externally (which leadership style box do I need to fit?) and instead focused more time inwardly to understand my own mind, its dynamics and what pitfalls I should be aware of.

This, my friend, was the game changer. And I’m here today to help as many emerging leaders go through the same personal learning journey, one step at a time. 

Get in touch with me if you’d like to help your team raise their game through self-awareness !