Having crossed over from the world of product marketing to the agency side, I’ve had the opportunity to see medical device and diagnostic product launches from a different perspective. I now have the luxury of focusing on the planning and execution of the communication plan, without the responsibility of getting the product through the product development process. From this vantage point, I have gained a greater appreciation of the value of having a creative theme. I knew it was helpful to have one – but I never had time to consider why. Recently I was asked “Why do we need to spend time developing a creative theme?” To answer, I drew on my experience as a product manager.
What is a creative theme?
A creative theme is a unifying creative concept that can be used across all campaign messages, calls to action, communication channels and audiences. It’s that “big idea” that captures interest and creates an emotional connection between the brand and the target audience. Typically, it is comprised of a headline or tagline along with a key visual. It should be distinctive and memorable like Nike’s “Just Do It” or MasterCard’s “Priceless.” Just what makes a creative theme great is a whole other subject – so for now I’ll focus on six ways having a great creative theme can make your life better as you launch your next product or marketing campaign.
1. Bring positioning to life
Good positioning strategies connect with your customers' emotional drivers, such as protecting patients, reducing stress or risk, or giving them more time in their day; however, most are not expressed in a way that brings that emotion to life. A great creative theme personifies and humanizes the positioning so that the customer can have an emotional connection with the brand or product.
2. Consistency
As marketers, we all know that having a consistent message is important. Combined with messaging, a creative theme provides the foundation for developing consistent communications across all different channels and media - brochures, website, trade show graphics, advertising, direct mail, email, social media, apps, games, contests, et cetera… A key value of a creative theme is that is takes consistency beyond what your communications SAY to how they FEEL.
3. Get buy in
One of the critical success factors that we can’t ignore is that we need to have buy-in from our boss and other stakeholders in our organization on product positioning and messaging. Here's an example of how the creative theme can make that easier: I once worked with a medical device that had a positioning strategy related to giving the physician better control. The word “control” caused some concern in the marketing team as it seemed too hard and cold. Buy-in for the positioning only came when our agency presented a creative theme that took the "control" positioning and made it feel like “precision in your expert hands.”
4. Generate excitement
Sometimes it can be challenging to generate excitement in your organization with just a positioning statement and a series of key messages. I think of launching a marketing campaign as a bit like baking a cake. When it’s just a pile of ingredients (positioning statement, claims, messages) it’s just not compelling. But mix those elements together in just the right proportions and you’ve got something much more enticing. In the product launch process, the development of the creative theme is a bit like that moment you can really start to smell the cake baking. You can sense what it’s going to taste like, even the exact flavor, and you start to anticipate and look forward to eating it. Creating that excitement, anticipation, and desire for what’s coming is the power of a creative theme.
5. Seed creativity
I’ve also found that having a great creative theme helps spark ideas for other aspects of the product launch. There are many different programs and events that get built around the launch of a product or a major campaign, such as sales contests, internal prizes or awards, and customer events. Coming up with concepts and themes for all these diverse projects can be daunting, but with a solid creative theme to leverage, it just seems to be easier to come up with ideas.
6. Be cost effective
A creative theme is an investment that can pay off in saving both time and money. Your agency will be able to complete new projects more efficiently if they are building on an existing concept. It can also make it easy for an organization to produce materials in-house. Having your agency create a major piece (such as a brochure) can establish a creative theme–as well as provide content and a style–that makes it easy for internal graphic designers to produce low profile or simpler pieces in-house. A creative theme is like a roadmap – it helps keep your communications on track while providing opportunities to take different directions in the future without getting lost.
It might seem self-serving coming from an agency “insider,” someone you’d pay to develop your creative theme, but based on my experience on both sides of the agency – product manager relationship, I recommend investing in a great creative theme. You won’t regret it.
Jacqueline Murray is a Marketing Strategist for DardenLentz, a B2B Marketing and Branding Agency focused on healthcare and technology. Jacqueline heads the firm's Ohio office, established to support the region's bioscience industry. She has held senior positions with global marketing responsibilities for both diagnostic and medical device companies.