Lyndit Marketing
Marketing has a wide array of creative personality types. At the core of all of these different personalities are a few key attributes: energy, resourcefulness, self-discipline, wild child like imagination, strong sense of pride and lover of freedom. Most creative professionals–and I am generalizing–feel that constantly refining, if not completely reinventing expression and going against the traditional, is not only desired but necessary to truly capture the creative essence of what they want to express and showcase. So, creative people are the movers and the shakers. They are also the organizers and definers of the intangible. Those in creative marketing have adapted to be able to reach and relate to thousands through a single sentence and create a seamless positive experience to complex tasks through design.
Types of Creative People
The best visual example I have found that categorizes creative professionals is this:
Creativity isn’t reserved for marketing professionals—it’s a gift all people share. For some the creative drive comes from a desire for self-expression. For others it is the curiosity to explore possibilities.
Being some kind of marketing rockstar or stellar social media genius isn’t the key. The key to any creative professional really is harnessing a natural curiosity and always having an open mind.
“Curiosity is the desire to create or discover more non-random, non-arbitrary, regular data that is novel and surprising” – Build An Optimal Scientist, Then Retire, HPlus Magazine
The best marketing professionals I have met have been able to understand that the essence of creativity is experience, self-discovery and enthusiasm.
Reaching Across the Creative Aisle
Collaboration — Creative professional or not, an environment of positive enthusiastic collaboration is just what has powered extraordinary companies, ideas and untouchable brands.
In the creative world the focus is on creating first-rate work. However, I believe the cart is being put in front of the horse and with high expectations. The focus should be on creating a first-rate TEAM.
The benefits of changing the focus are hard thing to see. The stereotype of a bunch of high energy, project overloaded professionals sitting in a conference room sharing ideas is unrealistic and would actually be a big waste of time. The objective should be to have a very specific project and reach across the creative aisle to focus cross collaboration.
Understandably, moving from receiving project requirements through email to a conference room that is structured as a creative collaboration time is not a smooth sailing transition. Yet one of our primary skills is being able to design. We need to design a way that brings people together, builds teams and creates internal communities.
As creative professionals we are hired for our skills and potential competitive perspective. However, the evolution of hiring individuals that fit with the culture has been growing at a grassroots levels with many startups. The world of creative cubicles walls will eventually burn down and people will be expected to work together without being cattle prodded. Personally, I think this is the kind of change that needs to happen across our workforce and emphasized in our education system.
Takes Time
My favorite theory about team development was first introduced to me in my high school DECA class. The stage when teams first come together is called forming. Then they go through a phase of understanding who does what, what kind of authority certain members have and also what kind of influence each has which is called storming. The next is norming where the team is able to work together. Things may be bumpy, however, most of the group is now looking to benefit the team and helping pick up slack as well as fine tune process and responsibilities. Then the best and fianl part–that I have yet to really personally witness–is called performing and the team is able to smoothly take on projects, feels motivated and empowered and is excited to take on the next challenge as a team using collective creativity and energy.
“Teams are formed because they can achieve far more than their individual members can on their own, and while being part of a high-performing team can be fun, it can take patience and professionalism to get to that stage.
Effective team leaders can accelerate that process and reduce the difficulties that team members experience by understanding what they need to do as their team moves through the stages from forming to storming, norming and, finally, performing.” - Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, MindTools
Creative professionals have some core attributes that make them incredibly well equipped to take on just about anything. If you think of it in a Captain Planet sort of way–“with our powers combined”–creative professionals have only to tap into the creative collective to find an unlimited potential that can accomplish anything.
I really like this post I was thinking about the same thing couple of days ago as I was looking for a way to improve creativity and improve the productivity
thx a lot for giving me inspiration ..
Your welcome Geeee! Sometimes we just have to be reminded that our best resources and sources of improvement, learning and inspiration are other creative professionals.
Really good post. Creative teams should be created to perform something specific and nurtured in order to perform better. In that sense the first step in forming a team is bringing people with different backgrounds, even the ones that seem totally unrelated because you’ll get some game changing points of view.
Another important thing is to bring people that can work with us and not to bring too much people or people that don’t have time or the will to help.
Hi Jorge! I really like your perspective about building a team with lots of different perspectives. I think that is essential. Something that a lot of newer companies are doing.
There has to be motivation to get good results that is for sure. However, I think with time and some team building there are few dynamics that be formed to work. Most of the time creative professionals can accomplish a strong team by being put a environment supportive of collaboration.
Funny you say copy writer… I write the posts then my husband scans them over for my over comma happy drawn out sentences with seemingly no ending sort of writing style. Thanks!