7 unique ways to generate ideas for marketing purposes
Marketers are creative professionals by definition. You are always looking for ways to generate ideas for marketing purposes may they be blog articles, campaigns, a website redesign or customer polls & quizzes.
A marketer’s mind is like a speed car racing at 100 miles per hour. You need to stay updated with the latest content produced by your competitors but you also need to find your own way.
From marketing managers to followers on social media, everyone expects original ideas – surprising, never-before-seen, unique.
But where are you going to find new ideas?
Not on Google. If it’s on Google, it’s already been done.
And as we’ve already discussed, the best content is the one that stokes curiosity and exceeds your followers’ expectations.
Here are 7 unique ways that help me be more creative and generate ideas for marketing purposes:
1. Watch performance art
Performance art is one of the most innovative and surprising expressions of art. It challenges your understanding of the world and makes you question things you take for granted. Performance art is basically the embodiment of the artist’s ideas.
If you are interested in performance art, you can start with the following artists: Olafur Eliasson, Yayoi Kusama, Studio Drift and Banksy.
Olafur Eliasson is a visual artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art. He makes use of elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to create immersive environments and enhance the viewer’s experience.
His most-celebrated large-scale installation is The weather project.
Yayoi Kusama is a renowned contemporary artist famously known for her signature polka dots art, hence the name – The Queen of Polka Dots.
One of her signature installations is Infinity Mirrors, which offers visitors the chance to step into an illusion of infinite space.
Studio Drift is an artist collective that explores the boundaries of technology, art and nature. DRIFT manifests the phenomena and hidden properties of nature with the use of technology.
2. Talk to people outside your regular circle of friends and acquaintances
They say we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.
Our close friends and acquaintances have definitely a strong influence on us, our choices and our outlook on life.
It’s always good to meet new people even if they don’t become friends.
By surrounding yourself with people older or younger, working jobs in industries different than yours, you have the chance to come into contact with different life experiences.
Don’t pass on the opportunity to know how other people live, what their experience is like, know their challenges and aspirations, learn what they do in their free time or how they spend their money.
Even better if they match the profile of your customers. They will provide you with a unique insight and in-depth understanding that could lead to new ideas for great marketing campaigns.
3. Visit new cities
Cities are repositories of the culture of the people living in them.
Building architecture marks the most important events in their history.
Observe how people spend their time in the city, how they connect with each other through the city.
Notice how people do business, what their habits are, speak to locals and open a window into their lives.
It could help you get inspired and generate new ideas.
4. Follow content creators on Instagram
Content creators on social media are a boundless resource for creativity.
From illustrators to UX designers, photographers to painters – Instagram is, in my opinion, the go-to place when you need to get inspired.
Whenever I want to get refresh my ideas, I check these two Instagram accounts: daisieapp and cart0lina.
Daisie is a social app based on creative collaboration launched by Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams.
It’s a hub that welcomes creatives in almost every field: musicians, artists, designers, illustrators, film photographers, poets and content creators.
View this post on Instagram
Cart0lina is where graphic designer Carolina Fragapane displays her amazing skills. Her ability to create visually impactful and seemingly never-ending content is astonishing.
View this post on Instagram
5. Learn about a different industry
Just like talking to people outside your close circle of friends is beneficial, learning about a different industry has the potential to generate unique ideas.
How is that industry using technology?
What tools do people in that industry use to talk to their audience or customers?
How is that market different from yours?
What do marketing professionals in that industry do best? What could they improve?
What could you use from their experience to improve your work?
Do your best to answer these questions and you could extract a wealth of information and valuable insight to help you generate new ideas.
6. Run polls and quizzes
One of the best ways to generate unique ideas for marketing purposes is to run polls and quizzes.
Conducting polls is a great way to engage with your audience and learn more about them: their goals, their buying habits, their opinions on the hottest topic of the day.
Optimize your polls to get the most answers possible. Follow up with a piece of content (blog article, infographic, video etc) that highlights the results and provides further information or solutions depending on the poll results.
Your audience will appreciate it!
7. Browse old ads of famous brands
If I were to choose one book to take with me in the event of a disaster, it would be The Copy Book – How some of the best advertising writers in the world write their advertising by Taschen.
The Copy Book features a collection of some of the smartest ads created by 48 leading copywriters in the world.
The ads included here go back as far as the 70s and feature creative work from famous brands such as Apple, The Economist, BMW, Microsoft, Nike a.s.o.
Conclusion
How is a floating block helping me generate ideas for marketing purposes, you might ask?
It’s not about the floating block, or the miniature sun – it’s about the concept behind them. Both concepts use technology to awe people, to deliver a unique experience.
That’s what you need to take from these examples: discover the underlying principles and find out how you could use them to power a new campaign or a redesign of the website or a landing page.
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Meet Daisie, the app developed by Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams
Maisie Williams who starred in the widely acclaimed TV series Game of Thrones developed an app called Daisie.
Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams signed on to act in the now-famous fantasy series when she was twelve.
Ten years later, young creatives were asking her what they could do to be successful in the industry of their choice: arts, film etc. She didn’t know what to tell them – it’s not like the combination of opportunity and talent that put her on the right path could be replicated.
Or could it?
Her idea for Daisie crystallized while talking to film producer Dom Santry on the set of one of her latest movies. He was telling her “how difficult it was for young creatives to access opportunities that can progress their careers.”
Daisie – Bringing creators together to do amazing work
Daisie is a social app based on creative collaboration.
It’s a hub where creatives of all ages come together and collaborate on projects: musicians, artists, designers, illustrators, film photographers, poets and content creators.
Unlike Instagram or Twitter, Daisie has no follower count which eliminates the popularity contest from the get-go and allows someone’s profile to grow and gain traction.
“We see Daisie as a place where you turn ideas into projects and we help you find the team you need to create something special,” Maisie explains. “Opposed to other platforms, it’s a place to find your audience. For that reason, we don’t see Daisie becoming a rival.”
Mission
Daisie is founded on the belief that pushing forward together, with a shared vision, is what sparks creativity and drives change. It’s our purpose to bring creators together and support them to do amazing work.
Our mission is to see Daisie creators grow in confidence, take up space in their chosen fields, and build lasting careers. It’s our hope that ‘Made with Daisie’ becomes synonymous with groundbreaking and impactful creativity at all levels, in all fields, and from creators of all kinds.
Daisie is where people find their people, get inspired, and make real progress together. It’s a new route into the creative world; through connections made organically and the natural development of skills.
Here’s what you need to know about Daisie app:
- Co-founded in 2017 by actress Maisie Williams and film producer Dom Santry;
- The app was launched into an invite-only beta on iOS in the summer of 2018;
- It crashed after it received 37,000 downloads in week one;
- The app was officially launched to the public on May 8, 2019;
- 11 days after the launch, the app hit an early milestone of 100,000 members;
- It recently closed on $2.5 million in seed funding;
- The team grew from 5 to 18 members coming from established companies like Monzo, Deliveroo, BBC, Microsoft;
- The co-founders plan to take Daisie to other cities including Berlin, New York, and L.A.;
- The app does not currently generate revenue, but the team are looking into ways to monetize it;
- It is already receiving inquiries from companies who want Daisie to find them the right talent for their projects.
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5 pieces of advice for entrepreneurs in 2018, from a BTL agency
BTL advertising is becoming more and more complex, highly influenced by the rise and development of digital and mobile. Companies needs to be up-to-date with all the information out there and, at the same time, be ready to invest properly in this media. Carmen Zahiu (Rotaru), Managing Partner Tempo BTL, offers 5 important pieces of advice for entrepreneurs in 2018.
- Start with business needs, not with communication or event ideas
A big event for all your clients and partners, complete with a cool concept and ending with a party might feel like the right thing to do, especially if it’s that time of the year when everybody is doing it. But before rushing to get it organized, always ask yourself: what business need will this solve? Will it generate leads, or help drum up new business from existing clients? Do I have something noteworthy to present (new product or service), or do I just want to generate a networking opportunity? If so, what will I use it for? Each of those can be a valid reason to do an event or activation if you know exactly why you’re doing it, as opposed to ‘because we do it each year’ or ‘because our competition does something similar’.
- Measurable objectives linked to realistic budget
There’s a reason so many marketing articles stress the importance of stating clear, measurable objectives for your activities: because it’s really THAT important, and because so few actually do it. How many leads do you expect to get, if that’s your objective, and what cost per lead would be acceptable to you? That will help set a realistic budget, also. Or if it’s a consumer activation aiming to shift brand indicators – how much of a shift would make sense to you, and for how many people? Factor in media impressions, social media impact and so on. Putting a price tag on each of those will point you towards a realistic budget from a business perspective. But to make sure it’s also realistic from a BTL perspective, you need to…
- Consult with a specialized agency for both creative and implementation
There’s really no substitute for real-world experience. That’s why you should go to an agency that you respect and be open to their recommendations for both creative and implementation when it comes to BTL. They say everybody can be creative and maybe that’s true. But people who do this all day, every day of their professional lives develop an intuitive feel for what works and what doesn’t, and that’s what you pay for – not just deals with various contractors. And on the implementation side of things, an activity where you work with anything other than absolute professionals can easily become an expensive, disorganized, embarrassing failure.
- Align all stakeholders before briefing the agency
Different people and departments in an organization have different perspectives and priorities, and that’s normal. What’s very counterproductive, though, is not aligning all those different interests BEFORE briefing your events agency. When different departments weigh in on the project at different points after it started, the result is extra demands which strain already-optimized budgets and creative compromises that make no one happy.
- Always do a post-evaluation
Measurable objectives are pretty useless if you don’t measure your outcomes to see if you’ve met them or not. Always do a post-evaluation where you count the leads you collected and evaluate their quality, for example. Or you do a follow-up questionnaire to event participants and measure how their perception of your brand shifted. Also useful are after-action reports by both agency and client teams where they meet and review their collaboration and work process, what went well and what needs improving. The point here isn’t to find scapegoats if things didn’t go as expected, but to set benchmarks, test what works in the real world and do better next time.
Carmen Zahiu (Rotaru) made her debut in advertising at Tempo Advertising in 2004, as Junior Executive in the BTL department. In 2006 she become BTL Director Tempo Advertising, a position she hold until 2010. During this time she coordinated hundreds of projects for the agency’s clients, among which Danone, Orange, Petrom, Raiffeisen Bank, Mercedes-Benz Romania , Colgate Palmolive, Actavis, Realitatea TV, Unilever, Kiwi Finance, New Kopel, Porsche Group. In 2010, she joined the MediaPro Studios team as Sales Director. There she launched the MediaPro’s BTL division named MediaPro Live Events, working for external clients such as OMV Petrom, Mercedes-Benz Romania, ALD, but also for the group’s clients, ProTV and MediaPro Entertainment.
Why it’s worth working with freelancers
After the economic crisis the whole system changed and it will never get back to what we used to know. That is a given fact, proven times and times again. Adapting to this new reality, that came with its pros and cons, business owners had to change the way they were thinking prior and enjoy the new possibilities it offers. For instance, really experienced people that decided to go on their own and try being freelancers or digital nomads or small entrepreneurs.
What does a business owner or a manager win by collaborating with freelancers instead of full-time job employees? We gathered some major points one should definitely take in consideration
Experience and affordability, working hand in-hand
While hiring a full-time employee comes with a lot of responsibilities and financial and legal hustle, outsourcing part of your services to freelancers offers the company the possibility to pay a smaller fee compared to one offered to a company or a full-time employee, for a more experienced, professional personal. A freelancer working remotely doesn’t have to meet lots of overhead costs. Additionally, freelancers generally cover their own health care and other such benefits.
Moreover, they worked on a variety of different businesses from diverse locations, which makes them really valuable in insights and know-how. Each client or job adds more experience to their craft, bringing more skills to their ever growing arsenal.
Flexibility
Flexibility in projects and in hours. As most of the freelancers choose this type of professional life due to the flexibility it offers them in arranging their time as they consider fit, choosing the projects they take on, it also offers them the flexibility in their approach to you, the business owner or company representative. The freelancer will be able to work, without complaining, at hours that the employees wouldn’t consider fit. At the same time, don’t forget that you can always choose to work with a freelancer that lives miles and continents away, therefore the flexibility running higher. Frankly, the main reason why many freelancers have opted to freelance is because they love setting their own working hours.
Freedom
Derived from the previous point, choosing a freelancers also comes with more freedom, both for you and the freelancer. Instead of engaging a full-time member of staff, you can conveniently work with an external resource person on a need basis. Engaging a specialized freelancer only project based or on a limit period of time will prove to be cost-effective and very lucrative.
Fast and great quality
For a freelancer the reputation is one of the main assets he / she possesses, therefore they will always be motivated and show a lot of initiative and interest in the project, doing a fast and great work, every time. They fully understand that it’s in their best interest when they remain reliable and exceed your expectations.
Adapting better to new trends and technology
As a freelancer one must always be up to date with the latest technology and not be surprised by almost anything in their field. Moreover, being an expert also brings the need to always learn, get more expertize and better oneself. Qualities that the employer will receive every time they contract a freelancer, without having to invest in employees’ specialization, workshops or other types of training.
Good experts in specific tasks
When looking for a particular skill or having a special need, a professional freelancer specialized on a certain field is the perfect answer to one’s problem. Your project only has to gain from this collaboration.
Their understanding of small and medium businesses
Freelancers understand better the way the small and medium businesses function and are able to offer them the right solutions to their problems and help them grow. Because they often work on start-up projects they pick up a lot about how to build start-ups properly and how things ought to be done. Agencies tend to work with bigger clients or established SMEs whereas the freelancer is more of a natural fit. After all becoming a freelancer is like starting your own business in many ways.
Inspiration at its best
Working remotely, from the middle of the forest, in top of a mountain or on the beach, wearing want makes him comfortable and not an “work outfit” makes the freelancer be a more inspired and creative person. And that will only benefit the work you are doing together.
Happy client, happy freelancer
Each time a project is finalized successfully and the client is happy, so is the freelancer that knows a good review will help him along in his career more than if he would have been just an employee.
The Job of the Future
The future. The perfect job. All of these terms mean different things to different people. What makes us happy may not make somebody else. Forseeing into the future and finding predictable trends is a job that requires lots of research and inspiration, but it will never be 100 percent accurate.
If for some people the perfect job might be travelling and blogging about it, for others may mean sitting in front of a desktop and writing algorithms. If for some the job of the future may be totally related to the new technologies, for others may represent going back to their roots and the nature, following the naturist trend.
For example in Singapore, according to vulcanpost.com, there are three mismatches in today’s society that negatively impacts the employability and job search process for Singaporeans: mismatch of skills, of jobs and of expectations. Due to the lack of publicly available information, job seekers sometimes have a skewed impression of what jobs are up for grabs, and where they can be found. This in turn results in a surplus of jobs in certain industries while other sectors, such as security, suffer from a crippling lack of manpower. According to the Acting Minister of Education, Ong Ye Kung, there will be a job boom in the engineering and tech sectors of more than 30, 000 positions. And that, while at the same time, there are countries where the demand for these people is huge and rising.
Moreover, we have to take in account the fact that some jobs and titles didn’t exist some years ago, leaving the possibility for the same thing to happen in the future. In other words said, nobody knows what new jobs and positions will appear in 20-30 years’ time from now.
What is important to realize is that any job you would forsee for yourself, in order to make sure you do have a future, you must poses a set of skills that will help you navigate through the tough climate and find the right spot for you, even this one may change during the years. In our opinion, those qualities would require someone to:
- Be flexible
- Stay curious
- Be creative
- Be a different type of leader
- Have great communication skills
- Try to expand your boundaries
- Experiment as much as possible
- Know Himself / Herself
- Don’t be afraid to ask
- Build networks
- Keep the ego in check
- Be present and active
- Keep an eye out for everything new
