Creative Strategies

It is always hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performances, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it, you will aspire and burn until you achieve it.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

In this chapter, we will continue to look at the actual development of Internet communication efforts by primarily focusing on the creative presentation of information.

We have thoroughly discussed the development of information presentations and the necessity of targeting this content at appropriate audiences. This chapter deals with the presentation of this content-what it should look like. Creative concepts support audience targeting by making information presentations appealing to their audiences. Like the content they provide, creative presentations engage the end user.

Our role as Webmasters may not involve the creative development of Web sites. This responsibility usually lies with more artsy people. But it's important to understand some general creative development concepts and terminology taken from traditional marketing methods. We will look at a set of Web sites to identify basic creative development concepts. These sites will also be visited to assess the use of creative elements and to critique Web presentations. We will also briefly discuss creative development issues.

Multimedia elements, including sound, video, and animation, are not discussed in this chapter, though all could eventually be used in creative delivery of information. But the basic creative concepts discussed in the chapter are applicable to them as well. At the time of this book's publication, these media elements are becoming standardized but are not fully developed. Many of them are not immediately available to all Web audience members. As Web usage increases, so will the use of these technologies. And the general concepts we discuss in this chapter will be useful in making those technologies part of Internet communication.