Avoid This Creative Strategy Trap

As someone who has spent over a decades in the marketing world, I've seen my fair share of creative strategy missteps. One particularly painful scenario? When companies invest heavily into crafting a gorgeous brand identity and messaging...only to fail at effectively bringing it to life online and through customer interactions.

A pretty brand isn't enough

Don't get me wrong — I'm a huge believer in the power of smart branding and creative work. A compelling brand story, beautiful visual identity, and crisp messaging can be invaluable strategic assets for a business. The best creative strikes an emotional chord and forges true connections with your audience.

However, I've witnessed too many companies treat creative strategy as an exercise in prettiness. They pour tons of money into developing a stunning logo, brand guidelines, photoshoots, and lofty conceptual narratives. Yet, in their pursuit of aesthetics, they neglect the practical applications required to make that creativity impactful.

How you serve up your brand matters just as much

It physically pains me to see a beautifully crafted brand wasted on a subpar website with lousy UX, clunky navigation, and poor conversion pathways. All the art-directed lifestyle imagery and enticing copy won't do much for conversions if the digital storefront feels disjointed, makes purchasing difficult, or provides a disappointing user experience.

I feel the same way when a company lavishly spends on broadcast TV and fills its spot with artsy imagery and metaphors. Viewers shouldn't be left scratching their heads about what was actually being sold when interacting with your marketing, no matter the tactic.

To boil it down, great creative should strategically lead people into becoming paying customers.

Creative strategy done right

The most fruitful creative strategy walks the line between inspiring brand storytelling and pragmatic revenue generation. It's the Venn diagram intersection where big creative ideas are thoughtfully executed through functional, optimized customer touchpoints that drive measurable business results.

The most powerful creative work embodies the emotive essence of a brand while also converting casual interest into tangible actions like e-commerce purchases, consultations booked, or content downloads captured. The art serves a commercial science purpose.

So by all means, invest in world-class creative and bold branding to establish an identity that resonates. But then bring equal levels of discipline, testing, and optimization to activating that creativity through performant websites, ads, emails, and more. Stunning visuals and clever concepts aren't enough on their own.

The most effective creative strategies produce culture-beating brand narratives and aesthetic territories. But they pragmatically utilize those upstream "big ideas" to improve the gritty downstream metrics that ultimately pay the bills and grow the business.

When the creativity delights your audience AND propels them through a frictionless journey into becoming customers, that's when you've struck the ideal balance. Aim for beautiful creative artistry fused with conversion-focused implementation. Avoid the trap of underutilized aesthetic assets by taking a full-funnel view of your creative strategy.

Not sure where to start with your creative strategy?

Since I've seen creative strategies thrive (and flop), I've worked to find a recipe that works — and it's a little different for every company and industry. So, let's talk about yours.