Welcome To The Creative Age
Having marched through the Industrial Age and blown through the so-called Information Age, this new millennium presents an even more daunting age of opportunity. This could be referred to as the Creative Age. The Creative Age will be characterized by its reliance on small groups of social influencers, who have broad access to consumer information and generate creative and innovative thinking, both building the brand and sales.
Key Points For Market Leadership
- Leadership - Leaders, who have a strong vision of what the brand is and where it’s going, are in place. This is a conscious strategic decision to reinvest and reposition staff with their brand and the new tools in mind.
- Philosophy - Proactive marketers understand the power of this new media and the expanding need for information and speed. They realize that technology is a hidden force that enables empowerment and freedom.
- Roles & Responsibilities – Marketers must have the right personnel to determine if ideas, conversations, streams of data flow and information are useful or useless at all levels of the organization. Understanding of the brand AND having the freedom to act is key.
It Starts with Leadership
The new trend in American management is to talk about bottom-up managing, using the power of employees to help move an organization forward. What is often missing in those discussions is the need for top-down leadership that defines boundaries. Marketers need leaders to define the brand vision in order to free up the organization, ensuring high-performance, speed, and results.
Rethink Operations
An operations strategy defines your firm’s structure, processes, information needs, and staff skill levels in terms of your vision. It also focuses on the expense/capital investment side of the financial statement – getting operational costs under control. In this new age the roles and responsibilities of the organization need to be rethought and brought into alignment with the overall brand vision.
New Roles & Responsibilities
- “With all this change you must not forsake those important leadership skills that helped agencies deliver the business building results clients so desperately need. These skills, which are in danger of being lost in today’s high-speed economy, were strategic advantages clients wanted to pay for and caused them to treat their account management teams as trusted advisors.” Bob Sanders President, Sanders Consulting Group
The changes sweeping the market require that marketing structures change as well. Simply adding a “social media” director isn’t enough anymore. Just as the advent of television created the need for whole new structures, the Creative Age will drive change throughout the traditional marketing arena, including traditional roles and responsibilities.
- Market Research: Focus on listening to the steady-stream of conversations, track reciprocity and trends while providing information that builds the brand in an open format.
- Brand Strategy: Shape the message, and push out information to maintain brand personality, voice, style, and image. Create conversation starters, generate business building ideas. Push responsibility for communication to the lowest level.
- Advertising: Develop brand awareness tactics that stand out in innovative ways. Ensure the brand stays relevant and visible. Open new avenues for consumers to both discover and engage the brand.
- Public Relations: Engage influencers and advocates, support the brand personality, and develop a steady stream of ideas to build reputation and trust.
- Sales: Communicate directly with prospects and consumers, market research and brand strategist. Listen and respond quickly. Feed information top to bottom. Represent the active voice of the brand through engaging customers.
Bob –
Great post. Lots of really important points that will take time for us all to digest. But I think one of the points is we don’t have lots of time.
To flourish in this Creative Age, we’re working with several clients on new strategies. For example, we’re looking at some “rapid response” teams that can come in and monitor, create and contribute to brand conversations quickly. It’s like having a “Force Recon” team who can very quickly gain market intelligence, and if needed, engage.
Some of this is technology driven, but (thankfully) it’s also back to a content thing. People, agencies, and brands that can adapt their communication skills to the new technologies and social universes will win the game.
We’ve also learned that “controlling” conversation is an old concept. As you said in your posting, the leaders will have to keep their brand focused on the future. I believe the best defense of the future will be having a superior brand offense.
Brian Hemsworth
Newman Grace Inc.
ExecutiveMarketingCoach.com
I had to repost this as I am reworking the layout of this blog! – Bob
Excellent post Bob.
You have clearly articulated the difference between using a technology as a tool to get results vs that technology being the results. Too many of the newbies coming into the marketing field are not understanding that the technology, while critical to use, is not the end result, it is the method to get to your end result.
Having just read Gary Vaynerchuk’s latest book, it is so nice to see more individuals out there recognizing the importance of good content that is clear, open, and inspiring; not just a contrived motto.
Keep up the posts,
Steve
Thank you Steve! We try… and sometimes we hit the mark. After 25 years of content we have collected there has to be some good stuff in there!
Bob