FUSION #neosletter 4

Categories: Insights, NewsletterTags: , , , , , , , , , Published On: 22/02/2024
This surreal picture combines different subjects covered in the newsletter. It shows Barbie and Oppenheimer stood side by side facing away from the camera towards a horizon. Above them is a blue sky and an animated cloud containing a 30% discount sign.

The ‘value of creativity’ dominates this month’s curated creative content – from campaigns that are sustainable and cost-efficient to those that make B2Bs feel understood. And all this by way of using creativity as a strategic tool to drive brand value, demonstrate the value of your work, learn about AI tools and get a handle on the intangible. In the case of the latter, that means adopting Barbie’s stance towards the world in 2024.

#B2B #creativecampaign: LinkedIn’s No One Gets What You Do

Cool ad spot! This campaign taps into the idea that while your family members might still not understand what you do for a living (I work in cloud sales and my mum thinks I sell clouds type of thing), the community of B2Bers on LinkedIn do. You’re in the right place by being on LinkedIn is the message. Of course, you’ll then need your own creative campaign to connect with your specific community within the wider one, which is where we can help. But, back to the LinkedIn ad, it’s totally HHE (humorous, human-centred and empathetic). If Ryan Reynolds made business ads, this would be one of them. No wait, he did produce this, or rather his agency Maximum Effort did.

https://www.linkedin.com/business/marketing/blog/linkedin-ads/find-b2b-audience-relevant-marketing-platform-linkedin

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/11/08/linkedin-no-one-knows-what-you-do-teases-the-confused-parents-b2b-marketers

#businessgrowth #scalingbusiness: Don’t dis the crayons

Need help making the case for investing in creative within your business? Perhaps you’re the person who needs to be convinced to invest? In article #2 in his epic series of articles for LinkedIn, scaling B2B brand and marketing leader James Bridgman makes clear how investing in creative can help to future-proof your brand and ensure it will stand tall in the impending swell of AI/automated content. As you might imagine, we were sat here nodding along to practically every point. Particularly the one about the pressing need for businesses to invest in empathetic, people-centred, trust-engendering creative comms strategies and high-quality creative outputs. With each of James’s comments a quotable extract, picking one to include here was tricky:

“Creativity in business is not just about aesthetics (or crayons); it’s a strategic tool that drives sales, builds shareholder and brand value, and future-proofs an organisation for the fast arriving ‘Aipocalypse’.”

In article #1 in the series, James outlines the type of creative support a business needs depending on its size and stage of growth. Article #3 is hotly anticipated.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scaling-win-part-2-what-role-does-creative-play-james-bridgman-uyl9e/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scaling-win-marketing-priorities-fast-growing-b2b-james-bridgman-twnie/

#marketresearch: Is your work looking good?

As we look forward to the outtakes from Watch Me Think’s not-to-be-missed annual VIP event this spring, we are still dining out on last year’s feast for thought on truth-telling in market research in a post-truth world. In a panel session involving client- and agency-side insight brains, one of the topics up for discussion was how to get buy-in for work. The development of powerful narratives and visual storytelling were considered central components, helping with understanding and memorability. But the key takeaway for us was the weight given to not only the creative ideas but the outputs as well. The idea being that these directly reflect the value the research team places on its own work and in turn how this is received. For more market research and marketing nuggets, sign up for WMT’s now famous 100 newsletter.

https://blog.watchmethink.com/

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“Creativity in business is not just about aesthetics (or crayons); it’s a strategic tool that drives sales, builds shareholder and brand value, and future-proofs an organisation for the fast arriving ‘Aipocalypse’.”
– James Bridgman, scaling B2B brand and marketing leader

#AI #creativeexercise: Once upon a tool

According to Contagious’s latest Radar report, 46.6% of the agency and client-side executives interviewed for the study are using AI a few times a week, while 46.6% aren’t using it at all and only 6.8% are using it all the time. Our team is in the first camp when it comes to using generative AI tools. We use it to get the ball rolling with initial ideas to riff off, to conduct topline research or summarise (publicly available) information. We also run some internal creative exercises to experiment with and get a feel for the kit. One of the ways we flex our creative parts and narrative capabilities is to imagine a brand as a character in a story. We thought we’d test this out using Microsoft Copilot to write a children’s story in the style of Roald Dahl about a character called NEO. Naturally, NEO has creative powers and saves businesses from the challenges posed by the introduction of AI. The results were a little confused, a bit wide of the brief (a matter of interpretation) and, as you’d expect, derivative. But the way in which they were brought together wasn’t without surprise. It got us thinking anyway and sparked a load more prompts. Happy to share the draft story if you’d like a copy. Pop over a connect request.

https://www.contagious.com/news-and-views/the-contagious-radar-advertising-industry-report-2024

#financialservices #casestudy: A template for (sustainable) success

Here’s one we made earlier for client-partner Mirabaud Asset Management (MAM). MAM’s top team wanted a new visual strategy that properly reflected the brand’s purpose and sustainability story while avoiding clichéd sustainability imagery. The new strategy needed to fit within but also flex the wider Mirabaud Group’s corporate guidelines to distinguish MAM, rendering the brand immediately recognisable and relevant to specific markets. What’s more, it had to be an approach that the internal marketers could pick up and run with. Given the MAM team’s challenging content campaign schedule, the approach needed to be cost-efficient and highly workable without compromising the quality of the creative. See how we worked our magic. Interested in template development? Ping us via whichever method suits you.

https://www.neoposition.com/portfolio-items/case-study-mirabaud-asset-management/

#creativetrends: Brands need to be more Barbie (human-centric)

Flying in the circuit board of the current technological revolution, the general consensus of the creative community, again according to Contagious’ latest Radar report, is that we (brands included) ‘should all be more ‘Barbie’ (optimistic, progressive, human-centric) versus ‘Oppenheimer’ (pragmatic, tech-focussed, ruthless) in the year ahead. There was also a mention of looking good in pink as opposed to a sharp hat. Now, there we might need to disagree, as we do like a natty hat. Putting to one side any issues of using a plastic doll to represent a human focus, it’s a neat use of a current cultural reference point to bring a prevailing mood, want or need to life.

https://www.contagious.com/news-and-views/the-contagious-radar-advertising-industry-report-2024

The magic’s in what we do together. Bring on the fusion (not that fusion), Team NEO

*Oppenheimer/Barbie image created by Rafael Cabal (@justralphy) from rare-gallery.com. Creative Commons 2023.

[This content was originally posted on LinkedIn. Follow us on LinkedIn.]

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