No matter which industry you work in, there will always be room for creativity.
Without the ability to be creative with your work, how will you allow yourself to stand out from the crowd? To break free from the homogeneity present in many major organisations? Creativity is a highly desirable attribute in the workplace and should be encouraged across the office floor. Everybody should be given the freedom to express their creativity, but for some it’s a necessity.
As a Chief Marketing Officer for any business, you should be able to quickly adapt to any situation, work around change, and approach situations with an open and creative mind. Your marketing strategies should sparkle with charisma and charm should almost ooze off every page. Without creativity, a CMO will fail to overcome problems that will more than likely be thrown their way. You need to have the ability to flip any situation, good or bad, and make every angle look golden.
But what are the typical traits a CMO must have? Which characteristics of creativity are needed to be the best?
1. Storytelling
Creating a marketing strategy is very similar to writing, but instead of creating quirky relatable characters, you’re telling the story of your company’s brand and all of what it should embody. You want to be able to reach out to consumers, and connect with them on an emotional level.
What some successful PR pros and marketing wizards tend to do is use storytelling techniques in order to grab the attention of your customers and capture their imaginations. You want to be able to take your audience on a journey, but how you do so is up to you.
There are plenty of techniques out there for you to utilise. Do you want to encapsulate your company as a hero figure? Maybe you’d like to even manifest this into a central character?
2. Embrace Data
As a CMO, you can spend hours and hours developing new campaigns and strategies, but without the hard facts to back it up it will most likely end up a flop, either by not understanding your target audience or by not doing enough research.
This is where the numbers come in.
A good CMO must be able to take data and confine it into something creative and appealing. They must be able to take that data and use it to accurately gauge their target audience and deliver your strategy.
3. Step Out Of Your Box
Although it may be difficult to do, one of the best things you can do is to view issues from an alternative angle. Try and take a different approach to something and leave your regular conventions at the door. If something is stunting your creative flow, take five minutes away for a quick brainstorming session.
When you view a problem, you are viewing it through your normal scope which could be clouding your judgement. Try to identify which issues are colouring your vision in order to get a clear view of the problem and be able to come up with a new, creative solution. Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone!
4. Be Resourceful
Sometimes you might find that your potential budget for a project might be a little smaller than you were expecting. This is ok!
As a thriving CMO, you should have no problem stretching your limitations and finding creative solutions to a lack of funds. You should be able to beg, borrow and steal in order to make your campaign a success, and not be afraid to change things up if needed.
5. Be Collaborative
Collaboration is exciting. It offers the opportunity to share your ideas with another passionate individual in the hope of creating something wonderfully unique. You can discover new strengths, delegate tasks and ultimately create a smooth process of production. You can each inject your own flavour of creativity into the one project, in the end delivering a product that shines.
CMO’s should be dipping into the talents pools within their industry and have a keen eye for spotting anyone who might prove to be an asset in the future. Collaboration is all about bouncing ideas off others in order to weed out the garbage and unearth the gems. So get connecting!
