design-and-creativity-are-borderless

Sri Lanka

Colombo

Lahesh KavindaLahesh Kavinda

Lahesh

Kavinda

Digital Product Designer from Sri Lanka with a passion for motion design. Drinks one cup of tea every hour.

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Sri Lanka

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Thailand

Bangkok

Tintin SupawichTintin Supawich

Tintin

Supawich

Passionate Digital Designer who loves to play with colors. Loves to stay at home chilling every weekend.

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Thailand

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Cambodia

Pnom Penh

Sophal NeakSophal Neak

Sophal

Neak

Graphic Designer and freelance photographer from a small Cambodian village. Loves telling story through Design and Photography.

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Cambodia

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Vietnam

HoChiMinh

Tuan LeTuan Le

Tuan

Le

Creative Director and Entrepreneur in Ho Chi Minh City. Grew up without a toothbrush; used to rub his fingers on lime leaves and then brushed his teeth. Necessity breeds creativity.

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Vietnam

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China

Beijing

Yuan FengYuan Feng

Yuan

Feng

Product Designer from Beijing. She can recite lots of Chinese ancient poems and has a huge obsession with puzzles.

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China

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Japan

Tokyo

Mikiko KikuokaMikiko Kikuoka

Mikiko

Kikuoka

Web and Graphic designer from Japan working with Love, Passion and Dedication. No Yakitori, no life.

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Japan

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Indonesia

Surabaya

Alfrey DavillaAlfrey Davilla

Alfrey

Davilla

A logo designer and illustrator from Indonesia who loves to create simple but smart visual designs. Always wants to simplify batik patterns, and considers that gado-gado is too complex to eat.

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Indonesia

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Australia

Melbourne

Marco PalmieriMarco Palmieri

Marco

Palmieri

Animator and Illustrator from the Land Down Under. Does his best work in his sleep and can jump over a park bench.

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Australia

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New Zealand

Auckland

Colombia

Bogota

Alejandra MolanoAlejandra Molano

Alejandra

Molano

Design Lead from Colombia and Yoga certified instructor. Lives her life with Buddhism and mindfulness as foundations.

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Colombia

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Mexico

Mexico City

Zero MoralesZero Morales

Zero

Morales

Digital Designer from Mexico specialized in Branding and Interactive Design. He was meant to be a musician but someone told him that he sucked at singing…

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Mexico

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Peru

Lima

Paola BautistaPaola Bautista

Paola

Bautista

Graphic designer from Peru, with a knack for documentary photography. Practices Taekwondo and, she is quite good at it.

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Peru

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Bolivia

La Paz

Mathew PradaMathew Prada

Mathew

Prada

Graphic Designer from Bolivia, with a strong focus on lettering. Super Smash Bros competitive player.

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Bolivia

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Brazil

Rio De Janeiro

Julia AlburquerqueJulia Alburquerque

Julia

Alburquerque

Designer from Brazil, obsessed with the ever-changing digital landscape and where it can take us. She’s an old soul with a weakness for beautiful books and a strong passion for her dogs.

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Brazil

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Argentina

Buenos Aires

Maria VargasMaria Vargas

Maria

Vargas

Argentinian Digital Designer based in Buenos Aires who loves comic books, metal music and video games. She would be covered in tattoos but her obsession for details gets in the way.

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Argentina

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Chile

Santiago

Valentina CorralValentina Corral

Valentina

Corral

Art Director & Photographer based in Chile. She loves crime books and in another life she would definitely be a forensic scene investigation scientist.

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Chile

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click to start the journey

Esperanto is the year long  journey of  Robin Noguier through 16 countries from January to December 2018 that shine a light on talents from all over the world.

sri lankathailandcambodiavietnamchinajapanindonesiaaustralianew zealandcolombiamexicoperuboliviabrazilargentinachileback to top

introductionchapter 1chapter 2conclusion

creativity-and-innovation-should-fuel-technology-choices

It’s tempting to assume that technology is the key when it comes to reaching your audience and engaging them. However, creativity and innovation trump purely technological choices. From omnichannel presence to new channel launches, these are vital ingredients to transform your marketing while ensuring that it is both objective and trackable.

Creative content must be held accountable for performance because it is the single largest lever you possess in the marketing process. Remember, sales success comes down to one thing: an emotional connection with your audience. Facebook and Google highlight the fact that 80% of a company’s marketing success hinges on creative messaging. Only 20% of that success stems from technology.

However, content alone is not enough to achieve creative marketing success. It must be combined with an innovation strategy and the right technological tools. Otherwise, it’s impossible to achieve ROI. An equal mix of creativity and innovation process, supported by technology ensures reach, engagement and the ability to succeed.

Creativity vs. innovation vs. technology

To discuss this intelligently, we must break the situation down into component elements.

  • Innovation: Really, innovation is nothing more than taking an existing idea or product and making it better by applying creative ideas.
  • Creativity: Creativity is an indirect path to innovation by harnessing unique ideas to achieve key improvements in an idea or product.
  • Technology: Technology is the ability to apply scientific knowledge in order to achieve a practical purpose, such as audience reach in marketing.

Often, marketing collateral fails to perform because so-called “safe” choices were made and there were too many hands stirring the pot. The focus is usually on technology, and creativity and innovation fall by the wayside. Marketing should not be a design-by-committee process. The secret to achieving real, measurable, repeatable results is to allocate the right amount of time, the right budget, and the creative talent necessary to achieve your goals.

Forrester put things clearly into perspective: “Shift the $19 billion, earmarked for technology and move over to creativity.” Tech is black and white, on or off. It’s binary. True innovation does not stem from a zero-sum game. Innovation is elusive, and perhaps even a little frightening, but creative content’s ability to resolve insights into a clear, provocative direction aligned with brand goals and strategy while fostering innovation is unmatched.

Data-driven marketing

Data-driven marketing delivers vital performance in measurable, trackable ways. Your marketing efforts must be based on accurate data insights used to inform innovative builds, initiatives and campaigns. Unfortunately, marketers often get lost in the binary-nature of data and fail to realize the true potential to inform performance. Data actually contains multiple dimensions that hold the key to success.

However, there are two problems with this situation. First, it can be challenging to pair the right insights with the right creative content from the beginning. Instead, brands often lean heavily on using louder and louder calls-to-action in an attempt to simply drown out the competition.

Second, many decision-makers fail to understand the difference between creative content and innovation, or where innovation actually begins within the marketing process. Creativity is related to imagination, but innovation is tied to implementation. Both are required to create results that can be measured, tracked, and quantified.

In your strategy development, you’ll first define your brand goals, then you’ll use accurate data insights to fuel creative ideation. That ideation spurs the birth of unique concepts, which are winnowed down until you arrive at the winning concept you will follow moving forward. You then develop your brand story variations to test, and finally, you’ll move into production and then performance tracking.

“Innovation is NOT an event. It’s a process.” 

– Guy Kawasaki

The creative ideation step is where innovation really begins. Sadly, too many organizations simply rush toward their goals without taking the time required to envision the steps necessary to achieving innovation and performance, develop ideas that fuel marketing direction, and, ultimately, achieve success.

Of course, many people struggle to move from objective data insights to razor-honed creative content. This short video highlights the entire process:

Success hinges on design

Achieving success doesn’t happen by accident. It requires design and planning. Design-strategy is just corporate-speak for “planning phase.” Of course, it’s essential that brands begin from the right starting point. To do that, brands should begin by developing user stories and mapping out user flows across multiple touchpoints. The challenge here is if you leap from ideation to implementation without a solid design phase, you lose the ability to create compelling, success-driving content. Creative innovation requires time, creative development, and the right budget.

Jay Pattisal, principal analyst for Forrester, points out, “Rather than bolting creative on at the end of the process, as an established look or defined list of deliverables, initiate the project with creative problem-solving to help define the problem and craft a solution at the start.”

Pattisal hints at something most corporations are guilty of doing. That is, leaving creative for the end. Ultimately, it becomes little more than an afterthought. Failure to invest in creative properly, at the right time in the design process, is exactly what delivers lackluster results.

Think of the design process as a waterfall. It allows all your builds to cascade into performance. Creatives provide you with the means to take ideas and transform them into wireframes, fleshing them out, with each pass informing the next and answering vital questions about whether you remain on strategy while taking advantage of new trends that align with business goals and incorporating those into creative assets.

Stakeholder involvement

It’s not sufficient to create the right design strategy. You also need to ensure that everyone involved is part of the conversation. Stakeholder involvement ensures that any creative content is built in alignment with your goals and KPIs in mind while incorporating feedback from the C-suite and accelerating the process and avoiding unnecessary bottlenecks or issues with quality.

Innovation and user value

Innovation makes your brand more memorable, but it’s important that you focus on delivering value to your end-user. Remember – it’s about them, not you. Content should be user-centric, not brand-centric. Otherwise, development flow will suffer and your end result will fail to achieve critical goals.

Managing innovation and trade-offs

Nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything is connected. Problems, challenges and trade-offs will rear their heads during the development phase and it’s essential that these are handled early before you spend money on creative production. Those builds cost time and money. Innovate, ideate, and then plan, while testing and dealing with hurdles early on in the process.

Constraints give creativity and innovation power

Accurate data helps confine the canvas when it comes to creative content. It sets boundaries. It defines the what, when, why, how and who. It also helps inform the flow and configuration of technology around the creative choice, transforming mere content into innovative marketing collateral. Clear data insights help provide content creators with an accurate map of their sandbox.

Early optimization is crucial

Do not wait until everything is said and done to worry about optimization. It should not be left until after everything is built. Instead, work with creatives from the beginning to ensure that data insights are shared and make certain that the potential problems and hurdles early on. Test ideas through surveys, pitches, direct feedback and more. Production should be the end result of all your feedback, as it is simply too costly in terms of time and money to redo it all if things go wrong later. Do it all right the first time by working with creative story designers capable of helping you connect with your audience to reach your brand goals.

“Marketers often get lost in the binary-nature of data and fail to realize the true potential to inform performance. Data actually contains multiple dimensions that hold the key to success.”

Conclusion

Creative cannot be an afterthought. Technology cannot be your main consideration when it comes to marketing. Ideation leads to innovation, which should then lead to the development of an overarching strategy that guides you forward from idea testing to content creation to user engagement. It is imperative that decision-makers shift their focus from technology and put it on the humanity of their message while embracing innovation and creativity to deliver larger returns. Data insights can fuel innovation and hold the key to developing the right creative content if you take the time to decipher it accurately.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.



About The Author

Producer and Creative Director Allen Martinez founded Noble Digital agency and has been implementing creative branding and performance campaigns for B2B and B2C startups like: Plated, Fundrise and Telesign as well as larger corporations such as: Coca-Cola, In-Bev, Subway, Nestle, AT&T, Anheuser-Busch, Quest, Hilton Hotels, Burger King, Univision, Yamaha, Miller Lite, Proctor & Gamble, McDonald’s, Heineken, Orbitz and Wrigley. Martinez has used Noble Digital as a platform to implement what he has learned from years of helping Fortune 500s and has reverse-engineered these powerful frameworks to launch and scale funded startups and growing corporations.



spark-creativity:-11-tips-to-build-a-more-creative-business

Modern CMOs face a creativity problem and opportunity. Sixty percent of CEOs consider creativity to be the single most important quality in a leader, yet only 25 percent of workers feel they’re living up to their creative potential. Why is there a gap this large, and what can business leaders do about it? It represents a gap that innovative CMOs can close.

Why? A creative workforce can give a company the edge it needs to stay ahead of the competition. If you want to give your team a creative boost, it’s important to encourage people to pursue the paths that interest them and reward unique solutions to problems.

Changing the very demeanor of your work, however, is always easier said than done. If you’re looking for practical ways to spark creativity in your brand, here are some places to start:

1. Put down the devices

Smartphones and computers may be integral to the way modern business is done, but they can also have serious drawbacks. While I was researching my new book, I discovered the multitasking that technology enables is a massive drain on personal creativity. If you want your workers to get a new perspective on a problem, set aside an hour or two with no devices at all. Forcing people to work solely with what they have at their disposal is bound to inspire novel thinking.

2. Read as a team

Long-form reading does wonders for the creative mind. Reading a book together as a work group can be a great way to get everyone on the same page, and browsing some of the best books on creativity can lead you to some great reads for inspiring creative attitudes within your office.

3. Organize team brainstorming

Even with the interconnectivity of modern offices, workers can feel more isolated than ever. Team brainstorming sessions not only give people the opportunity to share their ideas, but they also allow everyone in your office to get a sense of what their colleagues are thinking about and working on. Cross-pollinating ideas is one of the best ways to get people into a creative mindset.

4. Encourage failure

Nearly everyone wants to be creative, but fear of failure is a constant barrier to creative risk-taking. While no one wants an office filled with constant failure, it’s not impossible to strike a happy balance between company success and personal ingenuity.

5. … but have failure postmortems

As painful as it can sometimes be, the most valuable thing someone can do when he fails is to learn from it. If you encourage an employee to take a risk or develop a project that doesn’t come to fruition, sit down with him afterward. Discuss what went wrong, what he would have done differently, and what he plans on doing the next time around. Failures are only ever truly failures when they don’t inform your next move.

6. Practice office mindfulness

It may sound a bit unusual, but it really does work – practicing meditation, yoga or just moments of general mindfulness as an office goes a long way toward improving employee mindset. Being calm, collected and in touch with your inner self inspires personal innovation and free thinking in a way that just sitting behind a desk for eight hours simply can’t match. Start to learn your true value of time and then make incremental changes towards being better.

7. Go somewhere different

A change in scenery can lead to a change in mindset as well. Working somewhere different – even somewhere simple like a cafe, park, or house – for as little as a day gets different parts of the brain working. New environments inspire new ideas, so encouraging your workers to be a bit more flexible with where they work can lead to big returns on creativity.

8. Rearrange

If finding a different place to work isn’t practical, change where you work currently. Changing the layout of your office bends your brain in all of the same ways that changing your work environment does. Additionally, a team reorganization of the office is a great way for people to flex their creative muscles practically, finding the arrangement that works best for them.

9. Be active

An active body begets an active mind. Any exercise at all greatly increases brain activity and releases mood-improving endorphins. Simple things like encouraging a 20-minute office walk in the afternoon affords people an opportunity to take a break from work and distractions while giving their creative thinking a boost in the process.

10. Play games

Office games have long been a part of team-building exercises, but their benefits don’t just stop there. Competitive, strategy-focused games encourage thinking outside the box, as well as intellectual collaboration. Getting people to think differently – as well as think together – is critical to inspiring creative thinking that extends beyond the individual. 

11. Encourage team crossover

Office silos are one of the biggest enemies to creativity out there. Teams that never engage in meaningful collaboration are wearing blinders, unable to see all of the incredible innovation going on elsewhere in the office. Make your marketers spend some time with your designers or your developers work alongside your salespeople. Seeing the business operate through a different lens is guaranteed to get people thinking about their work in a new way.

For creative CMOs, getting people to think in different ways means thinking about work in different ways. Creativity is an integral part of keeping any business competitive, but it takes work to maximize your workers’ creative potential. And, creativity is a key pillar in innovation. If your workplace needs a creative boost, use these tips to turn your brand into a nexus of exciting, innovative thinking. A creative brand beams. And as the saying goes, happy employees make for happy customers.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.



About The Author

Brian Solis is Principal Analyst at Altimeter Group, a Prophet company, and a leading digital anthropologist who studies the effects of disruptive technology on business and society. His work humanizes trends to help leaders shape the future they want to see. He is also an award-winning author and international keynote speaker. His latest book, “Lifescale: How to Live a More Creative, Productive and Happy Life,” explores our existing relationship with smartphones, social media, apps and games. Lifescale helps readers take control to use tech to achieve new levels of success and happiness. His other books include, “X: The Experience When Business Meets Design,” “What’s the Future of Business (WTF)” and “The End of Business as Usual and Engage!”