I’m back in the creative seat again. I volunteered to step in and head our creative staff after we agreed Jim Everhart, my predecessor, should spearhead our hyperintegration efforts.

I’m looking at things from a slightly different perspective now – a perspective of someone with a lead “creative” title and responsibilities. As I remove my account manager hat, something strikes me. We creative folks have more tools at our disposal – blogs, podcasts, email marketing, and the list goes on. Our primary function has always been to think of new and unique ways to tell our client’s story, demonstrate a benefit and craft compelling ways to reach out to a marketer’s various constituents – engineers, channel partners, integrators, other influencers and ultimately, end-users.

Sure, we still need to apply our traditional creative skills, but we now have these new, exciting tools at our disposal.
---More---

Believe it or not, that IS the case according to a joint survey conducted by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB Magazine.
I was surprised. For the past several months here at Godfrey, several groups have been boning-up on the new media (search, analytics, convergent PR and the new tools at our disposal including blogs, podcasts, social networks and user-generated content). I assumed the B2B community was the “follower” but in fact, we seem to be the early adopter.
In an article in the August 13 issues of BtoB written by Kate Maddox, she notes that 31% of b-to-b marketers allocate 20% of their total media budgets to new media platforms compared with only 5% of b-to-c marketers. The bulk of those dollars allocated to new platforms will be directed to the entrenched forms – the company’s own web site and e-mail marketing.
---More---

I read an editorial in the October 2006 issue of CREATIVITY Magazine written by Jonah Bloom, an editor at ADVERTSIING AGE. The title of the editorial was, “It’s not your clients, it’s you.”
He begins the editorial, “Memo to agencies: It’s time that broken record about your poor work being the fault of your clients was consigned to the storage locker with the rest of your vinyl.”
Ouch!
I admit, on occasion, I have used that excuse. I agree with Jonah that we on the agency-side often assume that since the client lacks the craft skills, they aren’t creative. Craft skills and creative are both essential but completely different things.
I know we have presented work that clearly demonstrates our craft skills but may be lacking true, innovative creative. Our clients may indeed lack the craft skills but they may the ones offering the real creative.
---More---

“Discipline, discipline, discipline is my best friend.”

I can recall the hundreds, maybe thousands of times I wrote that sentence when I was a high school underclassman. It was one of the more common punishments doled out when we committed some infraction to the school’s disciplinary policy.

Although I certainly didn’t appreciate it then, today I see the merits of that one sentence. Discipline, while some may think as a coercive mechanism, can actually be a collaborative process of building consensus regarding accepted behavior within the confines of marketing strategies, programs and tactics.

If we discipline ourselves to developing a solid strategy from the start, we have the framework with which to guide all our communications efforts. This eliminates the second guessing, mid-stream changes that can throw a plan off track and dilute our message.

If we discipline ourselves to building a solid plan guided by our
---More---