Creative leaders rally peers to harness creativity as survival strategy
By Zion Rufus
Marketing and communications experts are urging practitioners to embrace creativity as a vital tool for survival, by leveraging its power to navigate economic downturns, emerging trends, disruptive technologies, shifting consumer expectations which continually demand fresh approaches, and ever-changing consumer behaviors.
Unanimously emphasizing the transformative power of creativity as the driving force that differentiates successful businesses from their competitors, these creative leaders revealed that as the business landscape continues to present new challenges, the only way practitioners can uncover innovative strategies, mitigate risks, seize new opportunities, and remain resilient is by fostering an environment that encourages imaginative problem-solving.
“It’s time for us to recognize that creativity is not merely a desirable quality; it is an essential ingredient for survival in today’s volatile and cutthroat market,” says Helen Akue, a communications expert.
Urging practitioners across various disciplines to embrace creativity and leverage it continuously in all aspects of their business dealings, Akue stated: “In times of economic downturns such as this, we must be agile and resilient; and this is where creativity becomes a game-changer. It takes courage to break free from conventional approaches, challenge norms, and find innovative solutions to mitigate risks and seize new opportunities. By cultivating a culture of continuous creativity, we can adapt our strategies, explore untapped markets, and differentiate ourselves from competitors, even in the most challenging economic circumstances.”
For Steve Babaeko, President of the Nigerian Chapter of the International Advertising Association and CEO of X3M Ideas, “the company that will do well from now to the future must take creativity seriously.”
According to Babaeko, although creativity in Nigeria is going from strength to strength, more evidently as Nigerian agencies continue to participate and win on the global stage, the state of the nation and the industry will get stronger and better if the industry continues to take creativity seriously.
Otis Ojeikhoa, CEO Brands Optimal Limited, asserted that particularly in the area of experiential marketing, marketers need to be creative to find the right insights.
He said: “First, experiential marketing, just like every other marketing practice, is a creatively founded enterprise. If you are not creative, you cannot find new ways of engaging the consumers. Like we rightly said, the attention span has become shortened and the
behavior is volatile, so we need to ensure that we find new ways to catch them quickly and keep them volatile.
You need to be creative to find the right insights; first, the right idea that fits that insight, the right platform upon which that idea will be carried for them to be able to have meaningful engagement.”
Meanwhile, Sherif Lane Akinpelu, Deputy Director, Strategy & Planning, SVP Communication Solutions is of the opinion that creativity has become straightjacketed in the Nigerian ad industry. In an earlier interview with MARKETING EDGE, he noted “We need to operate the advertising business as a fun business; we can’t be all too serious and I am not saying advertising is not a serious business but a mixture of fun and business. We have removed the fun. We are just chasing the money. I know money is important, but what is work without fun? It is getting boring by the day and if we continue this way the future of advertising is bleak, because we’ll be struggling to get younger people to join the profession.”
Addressing the need for agencies to evolve beyond the way businesses are currently being run in an earlier submission on the migration of talents to the tech space, Franklin Ozekhome, VP of Marketing and Communications at Vendease advised: “Let’s bring the uberification model to marketing and advertising services. That’s how we transform, lead change and growth, as well as harness technology to digitalise our services and put into place a 24 hour mechanism that connects the agency to clients, and clients to consumers.”
Ozekhome further noted that if agencies were to borrow the design thinking mindset of startups that focus on product development, prototyping, testing, iteration and launch to market at speed, they can become better prepared to develop creative marketing solutions that actually resolve mitigating problems beyond brand awareness, perception and conversations.
On her part, Dr. Tola Elatuyi, Marketing Director, Sub-Sahara of Pladis Global, urged marketers to stretch creativity beyond the normal in response to the rapid evolution of the consumer.
She said: “The shifts are happening around us because big brands want to remain relevant to the consumers.
Relevance is the ultimate goal. Without it, your consumers will lack what they need to be a continued supporter of your brand. Relevance leads to strong connections for brands and consumers. There is a great risk to ignoring shifting consumer expectations. Consumer expectations are changing at a fast pace especially with new customers entering the market with even higher expectations than those that came before”
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