Marketing principles for marrying creativity and technology for a brand

Our guest author Syed Idrees says today, innovation is a combination of creativity and technology. Brands need to find the perfect blend of the two.

Artists and techies - in the 90s, they were kept apart for a reason. One’s process would usually get in the way of the other’s. Where technology appreciated method and scaling results, creativity was more about free flow thinking and attention to detail. But this separation is not a luxury that marketing teams can enjoy today. It may sound like a cliche, but technology has really changed the way we look and interact with everything. To say that creative outcomes need technology is straightforward enough. But it’s important to note that in the world of evolving technology, there is an unsaid demand for creativity as well. In fact, today innovation is defined as a blend of creativity and technology.

 “The best way to create value in the 21st century is to connect creativity with technology.” – Steve Jobs

Perhaps it’s time we redefine our definition of creativity and of technology. Or at least try to define what they’re not. Creativity is no more about simply producing something remarkable or interesting. In an increasingly complex world, creativity has a lot to do with solving a particular problem. Likewise, technology is no more just a vehicle to achieve the seemingly impossible. It is about being tailored creatively so that it is accessible to a variety of people. For instance, when the Wright Brothers pioneered the airplane, they used every possible creative solution in the hat to invent a new work of technology. But the technology itself had to be creatively amplified for commercial flights to be possible. Similarly, if you are trying to solve a traffic jam problem on a particular road, the solution will not completely depend on technology. It will require technology to check the pulse of the road, and the on-ground conditions and come up with a creative solution (like a strategic diversion) that could be insanely simplistic but effective. And this is true not just for transportation, but any industry. A more recent example would be Instagram – a great social media, shopping, and some would argue, even news platform. It has an amazing technological range in terms of its reach, features, ease of use, etc. But if users weren’t allowed to flex their creative muscles and put up their own content, the platform would be meaningless. 

In a nutshell, creative thinking needs technology to come to life, and technology needs creative thinking to be truly meaningful.

Now before we get into more detail it is extremely important to understand there is a wide range of impacts from creativity and technology in different industries or sectors. Today we will just discuss the importance of Creativity and Tech in the world of marketing for a brand or an agency. 

Creativity+Technology (C+T) in Marketing & Branding

How does all this apply to marketing and branding in today’s times?

Let’s start with the basic touchpoint – a website. In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee built the first website at CERN. Today, there are over 2 billion websites live for users to engage with. Every day, around 252,000 websites are created, which is about 175 websites in a minute!

(By the way, the numbers are multiplying as you read.)

These statistics underscore the need for every brand to be present online. It's almost as if a brand doesn’t exist unless it has an online presence. 

With so many types of websites, the web design and development industry has evolved drastically, learning and adapting rapidly each day. 

Now that we live online, website designs have evolved to keep up with shortening attention spans, emotional reactions, how intuitively can it find information and how we interact with each other. In a recent study Adobe conducted, it was found that 38% of online users will stop engaging with a website if the content, layout or imagery is unattractive. Advancements in web technology have pushed designers and content writers to experiment with styles in animations, colors, parallax layouts, tonality, language and the overall content. And considering that more than 50% of content today is now consumed via mobile devices, all these aspects are affected by mobile responsiveness. Responsive design adaption has made a huge impact on increasing the engagement of the user with short attention time. 

So, the answer to an increased engagement does not lie with creativity or technology alone, but rather with a blended approach. Creative teams are just not thinking creatively first; they are now understanding the technological constraints and user experience for mapping out the user journey to deliver the best results. Technology creators, like full stack developers, are collaborating more than ever with their creative teams to find the best way to express their coding strengths and to bring their ideas to life in the most creative way possible. This methodology with a combination of both creativity and technology helps bring about a website which is not just tech-savvy but also delivers the right content with the best user experience.

Creativity+Technology in Sales 

In marketing, it’s easy to see the need for creativity + technology. But good salesmanship has always been about personal approach and authenticity. So how does the C+T rule work here?

Let’s look through the C+T lens in digital sales. It’s almost a no-brainer to bring up Google ads and social media ads as common platforms, but it’s surprising to note that even today, a lot of brands and agencies make mistakes in this segment. They fail to really understand this blend of creativity and technology and how they can effectively collaborate to build a high-performing sales campaign. Some of the best minds have made great creatives, but without great tech, they have failed and vice versa.

The most fundamental questions are not given enough attention, like:

• Are your creatives able to reach the audience?

• Is your creative merely interesting or is it also translating to a click and driving traffic to the website?

• Do your creatives and technology have the same objective?

• Is the loading time acceptable?

• Do you have one-click checkout options?

• Are you able to capture the user journey and understand why the user left or which section are they spending the most time on?

Failing to answer these basic questions always leads to a poor ROI. The data from answering these questions can translate into great insights using which we can build a more personal and authentic experience for the user, which in effect, leads to an optimal ROI and increased sales performance.

Creativity+Technology: The Future

Everybody knows that today all of us are looking to make a personal connection. Technology, by giving us access to the whole world, has shown us how small we may be in the universe; but creativity has emphasized time and again that we are individuals with our unique tastes and quirks. It’s only with a combination of both that human beings can feel connected with one another.

There are many brands that have successfully employed Creativity + Technology to make this happen. Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have been of great help to brands in making their product experience almost a tangible one. A simple example would be Netflix in terms of the amount of personalization it has built in its platform, its interactive movies and most importantly, its Recommendation Engine, which relies heavily on machine learning and a team of creative experts to build visually appealing experiences tailored to an individual’s unique psyche. 

The invention of NFTs is proof enough that people want to claim ownership of their uniqueness. The advent of the Metaverse has demonstrated that people – who are geographically, emotionally, and even economically separated – want to find every opportunity to connect with one another. It's exciting to see brands will leverage these in the future to build more meaningful connections. And they will have to. For only with Creativity + Technology will we, as brands and individuals, evolve into the next stage.

A blend of creativity and technology is the formula for the future. Whether it is problem-solving, reaching out to a newer audience, building connections or making your brand relatable, the implications of the right use of creativity and technology seem limitless. 

It will be exciting to see how brands will leverage these in the future.

The author Syed Idrees is the founder of Changing Tree, a full service Digital Marketing Agency based out of Bengaluru and a branch in Mumbai.