Creativity is not an easy path to walk but the rewards are worth it

Juicing the Orange is another book on creativity that this writer highly recommends. The authors are Pat Fallon and Fred Senn, co-founders and partners of Fallon Worldwide, a critically acclaimed, creatively driven branding company. The tome talks about seven principles of creative leveraging that can be applied in advertising and other facets of business and life. “Juicing the orange” is also a metaphor for the way marketers and communicators get the most bang for their buck from advertising. It communicates the principle of using the resources you have on hand, bringing in valuable creative thinking, and churning out compelling campaigns. The point is that powerful marketing comes from extracting the juice from the orange you already have, not allocating new budgets to buy more oranges.

By juicing the orange, you harvest considerable advantages. Harnessing creativity using funds on hand will help the marketer go further on less. And by purposefully aiming an understandable, spot-on story to the precise targets, marketing campaigns will surely have an immense and enduring influence on the customer. So whether you are selling the world’s greatest athletic shoes or raising awareness and support for forest conservation, sapping the marketing oranges will create long-term, identifiable outcomes that will successfully promote your storyline. 

When juicing the orange you start with great oranges. You should begin by recognizing or spawning unique, practical concepts that will yield remarkable results. Then you need to apply creativity in order to extract the best aspects of each idea, adding these elements to the overall marketing plan. Finally, you filter out any distracting elements (the pulp). In the end, you pour into the glass a pure message that the receiver can easily digest, the goal of which is to have a message that the consumers will love, remember, and take action on.

The authors’ pet buzzword for the “juicing the orange” principle is “creative leveraging,” or the daily practice of making creativity actionable and accountable for changing consumer behavior. This takes into serious consideration two things: the objective of altering consumer behavior by influencing them to take certain actions, and to concentrate on the size of the idea, not the size of the budget when considering creative ideas. Over the years, seven guiding principles have helped increased the success rate of companies in solving marketing and branding problems. Although it’s not a step-by-step process, these principles of creative leveraging can get you started.

 1. Always start from scratch. Brace yourself and juggle around your marketing problem from the beginning. You will surely gain more by doing this. The authors used this story to stress the point: During World War II, military researchers in England cautiously diagrammed the damage to Allied planes coming back from bombing runs over Germany. Statistically, the tail sections were the most heavily damaged, so the order went out to reinforce the tails. But the team was solving the wrong problem. Since the research focused only on the planes that returned, the researchers were blind to what was happening to the planes that were shot down. Once they inferred that the lost planes must have suffered damage to the fuselage or wings, they were able to take effective action. If you don’t start from scratch, you could get stuck in the mindsets of those who went before you.

2. Demand a ruthlessly simple definition of the business problem. In the 1992 USA presidential derby, political commentator and media personality James Carville put a sign on the wall at the Bill Clinton campaign headquarters: “It’s the economy, stupid.” It never became an official talking point or the tagline for a Clinton TV spot, but this problem definition steered the campaign’s strategy by focusing on the voters’ greatest concern during that time. Fallon describes this as “relentless reductionism.” In a marketplace where real product differences can be hard to find, much less to communicate, simplifying the marketing problem is basic.

3. Discover a proprietary emotion. Gerald Zaltman, author of the book How Customers Think, shows how marketers can learn from the science of how your brains work. He underscores that market research is often conducted as if decisions come from pure logic, when in truth emotion rules. As various other researches will tell you, emotions play a crucial role in coding systematizing, stocking up, and securing back memories — the foundation of decision making. “If the idea doesn’t have emotional significance for us, we’re not likely to store it, and therefore it won’t be available for later recall,” Zaltman asserts.

If you prefer reason to emotion, you will most likely find difficulty getting remembered. That’s why it’s important to discover your brand’s proprietary emotion, defined as any thread of emotion that the competition has underleveraged or overlooked; one that connects your brand to how people live their lives. So by the time competition catches up to the insight you have mined, you already own the territory.

4. Focus on the size of the idea, not the size of the budget. Take the case of vodka, which at one point in its product category doesn’t own an image, unlike the beer or scotch category, which assumes a clear-cut personality. Then the first Absolut vodka ad came out in The New Yorker in the early ’80s. The campaign didn’t use product taste or smoothness claims, only the air of mystery and secrecy built around the instantly recognizable silhouette of the Absolut bottle. Sans consequential product differentiators, the brand grew to dominate its class on the potency of the idea created in the consumer’s mind by its advertising.

With nothing more than the shape of the bottle and some clever wordplay, the Absolut campaign provided creative leverage. It enticed people to participate in a developing visual story. The campaign saw things from a fresh perspective.  As Fallon and Senn said, “The only way to generate measurable results is through good, old-fashioned hard work. Their approach entails rigorous research, not taking anything for granted; and combining the thoroughness of the left brain with the artistry of the right.” The campaign demonstrated how to make creativity actionable and accountable for changing consumer behavior.

5. Seek out strategic risks. General Motors introduced its Saturn car company to compete with Japanese compacts in the early ’90s, but it didn’t make a dent since the design and engineering of the car did not catch America’s attention. Research revealed that people were not fascinated by yet another new American car. What they wanted was a more unusual car-buying experience. GM and Saturn took a risk, and bravely anchored their branding not on the car but on a radically re-thought relationship between the buyers and the dealers. Thus the campaign line “A different kind of car company” was born. The brand position required 100 percent commitment from employees, dealers and salespeople, and as GM’s history will tell us, the company took off courageously. But after some time, GM marketers began to neglect this advantage they had created. “They began sounding like everyone else, not remembering that as marketing problems become more complex, creative leverage demands a higher tolerance for risk. If you don’t take risks, you competitors will,” Fallon and Senn stated.

6. Collaborate or perish. When the US government released new dietary guidelines in April 2005, two smart marketing teams in the Pepsi portfolio were ready to face off with official recommendations. As the authors reported, “The day the announcement made headlines in the press, Quaker Oats and Tropicana Orange Juice collaborated to run a half-page ad with the banner, ‘Get half your daily fruit and whole grains before you’re even out of your slippers.’ Clearly, media, PR and advertising people in two separate companies got more bang for the buck by collaborating on the joint ad and timing their message perfectly.”

7. Listen hard to your customers (then listen some more). This can improve your value proposition without lowering your price points. The case of USA consumer electronics retailer Best Buy is a good example. The company looked at the competition and found out that Wal-Mart made it hard for them to compete on price, while Amazon.com already owned the convenience of online shopping position.

Best Buy went out and implemented massive research and discovered five different segments, each with its own information needs and shopping preferences. With the data gathered, Best Buy revamped their entire operation to serve the five segments in distinctly different environments. After the implementation of the changes, the pilot stores had twice the growth rate of their old model stores. This proved that if you engage the consumers early enough in the research process, you’ll be able to figure out how to connect with them with greater efficiency. Here are a few other interesting creative advertising quips that apply in business and in life:

1. The goal of an organization is to understand culture so well that you can use its idioms and nuances to transcend blatant selling messages.

2. You can change people’s minds, but only if they first give you permission, and that won’t happen if they think you’re a joke.

3. The door to most business people’s right brain is through their left brain: first the smart, then the exciting. The consumer, ironically, wants it just the other way around.

3. Just as a sports team needs a handful of players who have been to the playoffs, your marketing team needs members who understand the hard work and commitment it takes to make the most of an idea.

4.  Success in advertising, as in business and in life, really does require more than just talking the walk.

5.  If you truly value your culture, then it will not be enough to hire brains and talent. You have to cherish the people who best embody your ideals. They are called culture players.

Creativity will be an increasingly essential business tool. And, as Fallon and Senn reiterated,  “it will be the last remaining legal means to get an edge on the competition.” Both concurred that you can’t buy creativity, and suggested that “rather than hire more creative people, unleash first the creativity in the people you already have.” And, as a final point, they explain, “Creativity is not an easy path to walk but the rewards are worth it. The survival of the fittest doesn’t mean the survival of the strongest. It means the survival of those who are most capable of adapting to change.”

* * *

E-mail bongosorio@yahoo.com or bong_osorio@abs-cbn.com for comments, questions or suggestions. Thank you for communicating.