“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” -Edward de Bono
Why be creative in business? Creativity is a source of competitive advantage, a way to add value to your service or product that uniquely differentiates you and your business from the competition.
The creative process draws from the facts, opinions, and situations that we DISCOVER and ANALYZE in the first two steps of ETSZONE’s Seven Step Process to produce the concepts, language, and designs that represent you and your business. It creates something marvelous that will resonate with your prospects and be valued by your customers.
Edward de Bono, who originated the term “lateral thinking,” said “creativity involves breaking out of established patterns to look at things in a different way,” and to avoid “instant judgment,” which is the enemy of creativity. We do this by including the right side of the brain, which represents innocence, not “how things should be.” If you innocently don’t know the ordinary, usual, or routine, you can more easily come up with fresh or unique approaches. De Bono came up with a structured approach to the creative process using “six thinking hats” that can be “worn” in alternation. The six thinking hats represent: facts, emotions, benefits, provocations, process, and caution. Using all these hats can produce valuable creative concepts and designs that can lead to developing something wonderful for your business.
The process and products of the CREATE step of our digital communication strategy program include:
- Creative review of your business narrative, including existing strengths, assets, opportunities, conflicts, challenges, partners, what differentiates your business, target audiences, and business goals
- Enumeration of new assets that are required to be created in this project, such as a website, a name, brand mark, tagline, required functionality, platforms to be used, or other attributes
- Generation of creative concepts, options, and mockups for the new assets to be developed
- A digital communication strategy including your message; sources, themes, and topics for content; types of media to be produced; initial pseudo-titles for articles; important key phrases; publishing and promotional strategies; backlink sources; social platforms; and email campaigns
- Development guidelines or cautions, including trademarks, copyrights, any areas to avoid, or anything that may require specific care or attention to special nuances
After your company reviews this creative portfolio, we are ready to advance to the next step, DEVELOP.
“Creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition.” -Ed McCabe
