12 Teaching creativity

25.07.2017

Creativity, brands and creative capital

Mònica Carbonell

According to science, creativity is an innate ability in all human beings. We are born with it.

It has to do with our ability to offer solutions to problems, to transform realities and to create opportunities where it seemed that things could only be done in one way.

Creativity is our ability to create value in an unusual way.

It is known that creativity is either stimulated or it deteriorates as we become adults. In fact, for decades it seemed that it had been relegated to certain professions. As individuals and as organizations, we had forgotten to stimulate our creative potential, that potential we are born with.

Fortunately for all of us, the boom of start ups has put the spotlight on the great value that thinking differently has for creating value in business and many companies are joining the race to incorporate methods that activate creativity in their teams.

But ideas by themselves are not an asset until we connect them with the consumer and we capitalize on them. And to this end, we need Branding as a method for creating value and preference towards the products and services of a particular company.

This is a process in which analysis and rational thought are extremely important because they lay down the basis for taking decisions, but it is also one in which creativity is what marks the difference in order to give the company “another level” of competitive advantage within market contexts in which differentiating oneself is becoming increasingly difficult.

Moreover, it is important to remember that brand is not something static. Its value increases or decreases over time.

It will depend on the value we managed to give it on the day we created it, and on how we manage it over the years.

If we want to build an exceptional brand and continue to increase its value over time, there is something tremendously important we cannot forget: to feed our brand’s creative capital. To stimulate its ability to surprise and create value for our customers.

How do you stimulate a brand’s creative capital?

1- Empathizing with our public and taking a creative view of the context

We will not find the opportunities where everyone is looking. This is why the starting point we are observing from is so important.

We need to see our public in a less superficial and categorized way; more intimately. We need to know what is important to them. We have to follow the pulse of social trends that affect them; to look at the market context from a less conventional angle.

The more quality information we have about the market context and about our customers, the more fertile the ground will be for solutions to emerge that are “a little or completely unconventional”.

This could lead us, for example, to define a new segment or profile of customers.

2- Defining the problem - Einstein said that if he had to solve a problem in one hour, and his life depended on it, he would spend 55 minutes thoroughly understanding the problem and the remaining 5 minutes solving it.

Let’s look for new ways to interpret the data. Let’s ask ourselves questions that help us to thoroughly understand the problem. Let’s draw up hypotheses and let’s validate them before going directly to a solution.

3- Co-creation processes - Creativity works by connecting ideas and concepts in an unusual way. The more perspectives and the greater the variety of profiles from inside and outside the company that participate in the Branding process, the more stimuli we will have for generating new connections.

In short, if we want to have a brand that is different, we must focus on everything that helps us to think differently.

Mònica Carbonell

Mònica Carbonell

Academic coordinator of the Master's in Strategy and Creative Brand Management

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