Keith Bates Blog

September 19, 2017

What’s keeping you from grabbing a bigger market share?

One bright idea probably! For giants we’ve pushed their sales into the billions. For small to mid-size clients we’ve helped them achieve millions. Value innovation is the challenge.

Where do bright ideas come from? Advisory boards!

Budget not up to a full service advertising agency? The trend is to advisory boards. And part of the reason for this trend is the plethora of marketing tools available. The transformation from yesterday’s simple media planning into today’s social media can be mind boggling.

But keep one thought in mind. Social media is MEDIA. It’s a conduit. It’s not Messaging. It’s about delivery, not about ideas. People are influenced by the content of the Message, rarely the pipeline through which it is delivered.

If your messaging lacks a soul — it’s a zombie!

Consider this quote from a recent ADWEEK interview of Tham Khai Meng, worldwide chief creative officer of Ogilvy & Mather, by writer James Cooper… “How do you keep your focus in such a transforming environment?” And from Tham, “Thinking about Zombies helps. That’s something I learned long ago when I first started writing ads and began a lifelong quest for something called the idea. It’s all about the idea, and always will be. When the ad doesn’t have an idea, it’s got no soul—like a zombie. The job always is to find it. Get down the mine shaft and look for the nugget of gold, and don’t come back without it.”

Or consider this recent headline from the Wall Street Journal, “Companies Set Up Advisory Boards to Improve Digital Savvy”. Digital savvy is nice, perhaps valuable, but it lacks the power of creativity. And creativity must also be added to your advisory board. For companies not ready for full advisory boards a preliminary step is contracting with a Creative Strategist.

Build yourself a mixing bowl. Insert the right ingredients.

The Creativity Module, third and last module of Bates’ Communications Support Planning process consists of two key components: core intelligence & theme/image standards. This is the mixing bowl where the ingredients provided by the audit and strategy modules become core intelligence, and are blended with raw creative power to produce THE BIG IDEA (lightning bolt) which is the source of all communications energy and the basis for our theme/image standards. Attitude changes occur through changes in brain chemistry … so think of yourselves as chemists… working on penetration and retention. The process is explained in detail in a white paper titled Probing the Mystery of Creativity.

For a copy of Probing the Mystery of Creativity simply email a request to keithbates@kbates.com. It will be sent promptly.