Creative Development
In this lab, we will look at some basic concepts that are helpful when developing the creative elements of a Web presentation.
The previous two labs highlighted the continuing theme of targeting creative strategy to the intended audience. Developing a targeted strategy can be accomplished in three steps:
Identify product/organization issues defined as features and benefits.
Identify audience issues that include the audience's wants, needs, and desires and solutions for them.
Build connections between these two sets of issues to create appeal and engagement and develop visualization.
In this model, features are facts or ideas that can be attributed directly to the product or company being discussed. Benefits are statements that explain how this product or company will satisfy wants, needs, and desires for the customer or audience. Both sets of statements are written from the company or products perspective. This evaluation helps marketers determine what they've got to communicate about.
Audience issues are written from their own perspective as well. First the audience is identified and described. Then audience wants, needs, and desires are written from an objective perspective without any consideration of the product or company being discussed. Audience solutions are also listed without initial consideration of the product or company. This step helps marketers determine exactly what the targeted customer wants.
The third step builds connections between the first two lists. Marketers look at what they have first. Then they look at what the audience needs. Developing ways to portray the company or product as what the audience wants, needs, and desires is fundamentally what marketing is based on.
Matching features and benefits with the wants, needs, and desires of the audience creates appeal and engagement. Presentations can then be built that leverage these two concepts against each other.
Developing creative strategy for Web presentations requires textual and visual representation of these concepts. Textual statements are relatively straightforward. The use of text and other visual elements is dependent on the audience and issues involved.
In a true creative fashion, these steps should each involve a brainstorming session, in which any and every idea on a topic is communicated and captured. Brainstorming usually involves a small group of people stating ideas as they are conceived. A note taker or facilitator writes down every idea as it is announced. These ideas can later be reviewed and refined to develop an appropriate creative strategy.
For www.putnaminvestments.com, an example development effort could look like this:
- Organizational issues about this company could include the following:
- Features- conservative, low-risk, professional, precise, dependable, smart, realistic, intelligent, informative, helpful, careful, wealthy, successful, traditional, etc.
- Benefits- company takes care of its clients; money is safe with company; company knows what to do with money; investments succeed; professional operation with experience and confidence; etc.
- Audiences are varied but all are investors. Investors want financial gain with minimal risk. They need security and serious consideration.
- Audience wants, needs, and desires include trustworthy and lucrative investment management; security about their financial future; intelligent decisions made on their behalf; information about the status of their investments; serious approach to a serious matter; etc.
- Connections can be made between the features and benefits and the audience wants, needs, and desires. Company provides intelligence, security, informed decisions, successful investments, and conservative approach to business for the customers-all things audience members want.
- Visualization of these connections appears on the site: a professional appearance stressing an informed, secure, and conservative approach that uses mostly text to represent this creative theme.
Another aspect of creative development involves the decision to repurpose information. Repurposing information involves using existing materials and graphics in a presentation to continue branding efforts, return continued impact for previous creative investment, and tie Internet communication with other media. The McDonald's golden arches are a repurposed image used to support branding activities.
Other uses of repurposed materials could be product information, technical data images, and graphics that were developed for other media but can be utilized in Internet communication as well. An e-mail newsletter may distribute informational content that was originally published in hard copy. This could be considered repurposed material.
Copy writing is the process of developing text-based marketing communication materials. Without going into a diatribe on the sinking quality of our civilization, let's just say that people don't read like they used to. People look but don't actually read most marketing copy.
Although books, magazines, and newspapers are read by millions of people every day (including you right now), the growth of other media and the overwhelming amount of images has shifted reading patterns in many people. Instead of actually reading text, many people just look at it.
The commitment to reading isn't present. Most text is skimmed or briefly reviewed. In-depth processing of text material is saved for entertainment novels or work-related material.
This means that marketing copy on the Web must be short and sweet. This situation was demonstrated on the Web sites we evaluated earlier. Headlines, captions, and short statements are the primary text formats in Web presentation development.
Exercises
Brainstorm the Evaluation of a Product or Organization
To understand the basics of a creative brainstorming process, start by first evaluating the product or company issues. List as many features and benefits as possible about a product. Be sure to write down every idea you can come up with in the next few minutes in a true brainstorming fashion.
| a) | What are some of the features of water? |
| b) | What are some of the benefits of water? |
Brainstorm the Targeted Audience Solutions
Identify audience issues by determining as many solutions as possible that the target audience may be seeking for fulfillment of wants, needs, and desires. For this exercise the audience is marathon runners.
| a) | Who is the target audience? |
| b) | How can you briefly describe the target audience? |
| c) | What solutions to wants, needs, and desires does water provide for this audience? |
Build Connections and Visualization
Identify ways to appeal to and engage this audience through creative content presentations. Review connections between the product evaluations and the audience solutions from the previous two exercises. Then develop a big idea that can be stated in one sentence, which describes the creative approach of this product presentation to this audience. Finally, list ideas for visually representing this creative strategy.
| a) | What connections can be built between the features and benefits of water and the wants, needs, and desires of marathon runners? |
| b) | What is a big idea or theme that can be used as a creative strategy in a presentation on water for marathon runners? |
| c) | How can this theme be represented visually in the creative content of the presentation? |
Repurpose Information
To demonstrate the concept of repurposing materials, let's return to two of the Web sites from a previous lab and look for examples of repurposed information.
Log on to the home page of www.disney.com.
| a) | List examples of repurposed material that you recognize from other media efforts. |
Log on to the home page of www.llbean.com.
| a) | List examples of repurposed material that you recognize from other media efforts. |
Understand the Importance of Copy Writing
To understand the real importance of copy writing in the creative development of visual presentations, complete the following exercise.
Read the following sentence once. While doing so, count the number of times the letter F appears. Please read the sentence only once at this time.
Finished files are the result of years of scientific evidence combined with the sharing of discoveries.
| a) | How many times does the letter F appear? |
Now read the sentence again very slowly. Count the appearances of the letter F again.
| a) | Do you get a different number? |
| b) | What does this tell us about the importance of copy writing in visual presentations? |
Exercise Answers
Answers
To understand the basics of a creative brainstorming process, start by first evaluating the product or company issues. List as many features and benefits as possible about a product. Be sure to write down every idea you can come up with in the next few minutes in a true brainstorming fashion.
| a) | What are some of the features of water? |
| Answer: | Yours will vary, but here are mine: Wet, dampening, cooling, refreshing, available, elemental, natural, life giving, solution providing, thirst quenching, diluting, dissolving, soothing, calming, lubricating, insulating, heavy, healthy. |
| b) | What are some of the benefits of water? |
| Answer: | Yours will again vary, but could include the following: Water provides dampness and replaces dryness. Living things need water to flourish and to replace water lost through processes. Water is refreshing and cooling in hot situations. Water is a naturally occurring element that provides and sustains life. Water dilutes and dissolves many substances and creates solutions. |
Answers
Identify audience issues by determining as many solutions as possible that the target audience may be seeking for fulfillment of wants, needs, and desires. For this exercise the audience is marathon runners.
| a) | Who is the target audience? |
| Answer: | The target audience is marathon runners. |
| b) | How can you briefly describe the target audience? |
| Answer: | Your answer will vary, but mine follows. Marathon runners are people who exercise frequently and run many, many miles on a regular basis. They are healthy. They perspire a lot. They also get very hot while running and exercising. |
| c) | What solutions to wants, needs, and desires does water provide for this audience? |
| Answer: | Marathon runners need a lot of water to replace the water they lose through perspiration. Runners of this type are very healthy, probably are engaged in a healthy lifestyle, and drinking water regularly is part of such a lifestyle. Water is also cooling and refreshing for runners while they exercise. |
Answers
Identify ways to appeal to and engage this audience through creative content presentations. Review connections between the product evaluations and the audience solutions from the previous two exercises. Then develop a big idea that can be stated in one sentence, which describes the creative approach of this product presentation to this audience. Finally, list ideas for visually representing this creative strategy.
| a) | What connections can be built between the features and benefits of water and the wants, needs, and desires of marathon runners? |
| Answer: | Yours will vary, but here are mine. Marathon runners need water to run. Runners get thirsty and water quenches thirst. Runners need water to replace lost fluids. They want water to be part of their healthy lifestyle. They desire water to be cool and refreshed. Connecting features, benefits, and audiences is the primary role of creative brainstorming efforts. |
| b) | What is a big idea or theme that can be used as a creative strategy in a presentation on water for marathon runners? |
| Answer: | Again, yours will vary but here are my big ideas. Water is life for runners. Running is hot while water is not. Run a lot and drink a lot. Simple phrases like these are useful for identifying creative themes. These themes can then serve as benchmarks for presentation development. Every idea, image, or text item can be created and critiqued based on the selected theme. |
| c) | How can this theme be represented visually in the creative content of the presentation? |
| Answer: | Your answers will vary but could include the following: Warm colors juxtaposed with cool colors. Water graphics. Natural water environments and scenery could be used in a visual presentation of these concepts. These visual concepts and other creative elements built into a Web presentation will appeal to the audience they were developed for. In this example, marathon runners will be engaged by a presentation created with their wants, needs, and desires in mind. |
Answers
To demonstrate the concept of repurposing materials, let's return to two of the Web sites from a previous lab and look for examples of repurposed information.
Log on to the home page of www.disney.com.
| a) | List examples of repurposed material that you recognize from other media efforts. |
| Answer: | Your answers will vary but should include images taken from movies and other media developed by this company. The logo in use is probably utilized in other media, as well as the infamous Mickey Mouse character. Characters from recent movies and cartoons are also involved. This use of repurposed material is to be expected at a Web site for a media company with recognized images as part of its brand identity. This company spends millions of dollars on advertising and promotion. These efforts increase and sustain recognition of these images in the consumer marketplace. Incorporating them on the Web site is a continuation of these efforts. In addition, the inclusion of newly developed images further leverages the investments made in other media activities to increase recognition and build awareness. |
Log on to the home page of www.llbean.com.
| a) | List examples of repurposed material that you recognize from other media efforts. |
| Answer: | Again, your answers will vary. This home page displays images and text used in the company's traditional catalogs and other media. Like the previous example, the inclusion of these materials provides continuing value for the investments made in advertising and direct marketing efforts. Usage also ties into the various catalog programs to build synergy between media. Repurposed material also includes information and material developed and distributed in the printed catalogs. Product information, images, and technical specifications that currently exist in electronic formats are easily utilized in this Web presentation. |
Answers
To understand the real importance of copy writing in the creative development of visual presentations, complete the following exercise.
Read the following sentence once. While doing so, count the number of times the letter F appears. Please read the sentence only once at this time.
Finished files are the result of years of scientific evidence combined with the sharing of discoveries.
| a) | How many times does the letter F appear? |
| Answer: | Most people notice the letter F three times in the first reading. |
Now read the sentence again very slowly. Count the appearances of the letter F again.
| a) | Do you get a different number? |
| Answer: | You probably noticed the presence of more Fs in the next reading. The actual number of times F appears is six. |
| b) | What does this tell us about the importance of copy writing in visual presentations? |
| Answer: | Your answer may be that people don't notice silent letters. But more important, this simple exercise helps demonstrate how fast most people read textual information and that extensive copy writing is not as important as many of us think. Many creative development efforts are heavily geared to getting just the right series of words to describe, explain, or extol a product, service, or situation. But many of these agonizing decisions are not worth the time spent. Many people only look at text instead of actually reading it. Many phrases and thought-out text blocks in traditional communication efforts are not read by the audience members. They may be looked at but not read. This is definitely the case in Internet communication, where the fast-paced nature and the shrinking patience level of most audience members add to the situation. In interactive media, the less text that is used to convey a message the better the chance it will be read. This means that Web copy writing must be extremely concise and directly targeted to the audience involved. Images can be used instead of text in many situations. And text should probably exist as short statements and headlines instead of complete sentences. |
Self-Review Questions
In order to test your progress, you should be able to answer the following questions:
| 1) | Evaluating a product or company for creative presentation involves looking at what?
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| 2) | Assessing the target audience should be done from what perspective?
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| 3) | Engaging creative presentation is based on connections between the audience and product or company.
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| 4) | Appealing to the audience wants, needs, and desires is not important in the creative theme of a Web presentation.
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| 5) | Large amounts of text should be developed and included in Web presentations.
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| 6) | Repurposed material could include which?
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EAN: 2147483647
Pages: 87