SET MY CREATIVE FREE! — Or, how integrated marketing liberates creative

Effective marketing communications (note the “s” in communications) takes many forms. Integrating your story into the appropriate mix of media helps break down the messaging into meaningful and digestible pieces. When you avoid an “info-dump” in any one medium, you increase your chance of pulling the prospect through to the close.

Case in point? I was paging through the April 17th issue of Fortune magazine and noticed an ad for KeyBank. It appears the “info-dump” strategy won and their pricey ad has all the stopping power, persuasiveness and focus of a sell sheet. Lots of copy—I mean, LOTS OF COPY. But next to nothing that compels you as a reader to stop and read the copy or remember the ad, let alone take any action with the advertiser.

Note here that the quality of the creative you’ll be investing in is largely shaped before it gets to the creative people.

Focusing in on clear and concise messaging and using the appropriate mix of media increases your odds of producing creative that’ll leave you stunned, amazed and left gasping for breath.

In the same issue of Fortune, you’ll also see a great example of someone doing it right. Acura obviously focused on a single message and charged the creative people to bring it to life in a big way. They did. To the point where I was compelled to visit their website where I got much more detail. Nice strategy…use compelling creative to drive traffic to another medium. Then use that medium to begin selling and building a relationship.