The Responsibility of Creativity

Agency types are forever in a scramble to ‘differentiate’. In our eyes, there’s no cookie cutter, and our uniqueness is easily quantifiable & plain to see.

However, I often think Agencies are like goths or EMOs - all individually different from the surrounding pack, yet share common themes that reflect a genre. Of course, the truth is, that to everyone outside agencyland, we all look the same! PR, marketing, digital, content, measurement, performance, advertising, media…all nuanced bands of rockstars that clients would love to see playing in harmony!

So why choose Clarity (I mean why not, we’re the best, right?).

Earlier this year a client said to me: “there are many agencies that do what you do, but you’re the ones we want to do it with” [cue small cry and typically avoidant, bumbling British response to such a meaningful comment].

This moment highlighted that client experience is so important in building our business. A consistent, successful delivery by people who are attentive, engaged and fun to deal with. However, we can’t confidently grow successful relationships with our clients, without first having a solid foundation. Ultimately, in order to expand the client base and objectively differentiate from the pack, an agency needs to foster inventiveness and imagination. In a word: creativity.

Creativity is also the key to bringing collective experience to the client, to help them differentiate, be unique and find the next hit. We need to be brave, celebrate and value difference and bring our own individualism and cultural diversity into what we deliver.

In a digitized and increasingly automated world, it’s also something we’ll need to dominate in order to remain relevant. This is especially crucial in digital, where algorithms rule and AI does everything bar ideate.

Recently we formed a Content + Social team, which will sit at the core of the integration between PR, Social, SEO & Paid. This team will increasingly help to provide creative strategies and assets for our joint global work.

But should creativity remain one team’s responsibility? Hell no - it’s everyone’s. It’s something to be democratized and celebrated throughout our business. There’s no bottleneck of thought. We foster an inclusive culture that embraces inventiveness and this will be one of characteristics that binds us as one band, in the agency hall of fame.

Include each other, bring in other teammates to a client ideation session. Try to push a client outside their comfort zone in trying something new.

In the end, it doesn’t matter which pack we're running with - it’s harmony in the creative ideas we provide to our clients that will differentiate us from the rest.

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Image courtesy of davisuko, via Unsplash

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