Why Great Creative is Important in Engagement Economy

BY: DDS EDITORIAL TEAM | APRIL 7, 2023

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Do you know how to make your brand stand out in today's competitive business climate? You might have many channels capabilities or social media platforms, but how exactly to make customers fall in love with your business?

One of the important keys is engagement.

It’s time to realize that we’re living within this new concept called the “Engagement Economy”. CMO of Marketo, Chandar Pattabhiram, elaborated the engagement economy as

“a new world where everyone and everything is connected, fundamentally shifting the relationships between buyers and sellers.”

 

In this digital transformation era, the more we make customers feel like “us” at personal level, the more likely they will engage with our brand. Further explained, customers want to buy experience and we, as the companies, should focus more on the engagement, not the reach.

In this digital era, the marketing game has changed and this is where creative advertising has an important role to make companies adapt faster to engagement economy concepts. And without doubt, making great creative always starts with strategy. We need to consistently capture people’s attention through authentic visual creative work and to be relevant to be engaging.

Here’s a great example of how creative engages the customers:

Domino’s Pizza

 

Coming from Nielsen holding research, it is said that at the European market, 93% of European consumers claimed to have made an online purchase, and that globally, online sales for FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) are growing five times faster than offline sales. In 2017, Domino’s benefited greatly from their digital campaign, Points for Pies”.

Domino’s did it in between the window of Super Bowl exposure, and invested in their revolutionary digital campaign instead. They used A.I. in their mobile app to enable users to scan any form of pizza to get points, and once they reached a certain amount of points, they got pizza from Domino’s for free. The results? Domino’s had global retail sales of more than $12.2 billion in 2017, with more than $5.9 billion in the U.S. and $6.3 billion internationally. Yes, the creative advertising had successfully engaged customers in their fondness of pizzas in the form of any kinds of pizzas, even including rubber toy pizza. Also, as the bonus, it drives their sales!

Airbnb

Quite the same as the Domino’s case, Airbnb gained a lot in the past decade from just renting apartments to being the marketplace people go to in search of accommodations. What did Airbnb do exactly? They created the demand then further engaged their customers with their user-generated content images, and actively engaged with people on social media. One of their successful marketing campaigns is “The Van Gogh Bnb” project. The idea was only to recreate Van Gogh’s ‘Yellow Room’ painting as a fully functioning 3D room and let it out through listing on their website. As a result, many of those people shared tales of their stay online and thousands of visitors came afterward. Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky, said “The reason I think the Van Gogh was so successful is that people want to have an intimate connection with brands. There is almost nothing more intimate than to sleep in someone’s home.”. You can see that a huge amount of trust was placed on the value of a single great idea.

Credit: Peter Wynn Thompson/AP Images for Ad Age

We now realize the importance of creativity we use to reach for the engagement we seek for, but what exactly do we have to do with this fact?

 

It is a matter of value versus volume. The CEO of Marketo gave his insight on what companies need to “un-learn”, one of them being

“Brands need to engage with customers and buyers to understand their personal values, professional values, lifestyles, wants and needs and more—and then the only real path to using that understanding to create relevant experiences is engagement…”

From there, we know that great creatives will speak value, personalize experiences, then make the product feel authentic and close enough to our customers that they want to engage with our brand. And that’s why, great creatives are important in the engagement economy world.

Another thing, we’ll have to agree that we must make sure that our brand’s value is aligned with what of those our customers and that the creative must also fit the brand. We can create all great creatives in your place, and we might just be the partner you are looking for to reach your goal in this engagement economy. 

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About DDS Editorial Team

CATHERINE ERIKANIA

Brand Visual Strategist

at Darshana Design Studio

FATHIYA HAMDAN

Image Specialist 

at Darshana Design Studio

Contact and get to know more about us on: studiodarshana.id

References:

Lucas, S. Welcome to Marketing In The Engagement Economy. Retrieved from

https://blog.marketo.com/2017/01/welcome-to-marketing-in-the-engagement-economy.html

Steele, K. Why great creativity is more important than ever. Retrieved from

https://martechtoday.com/great-creative-important-ever-201897

 

Dowd, E., & Maslic, E. Innovating with Digital in Mind. Retrieved from

https://www.nielsen.com/eu/en/insights/article/2020/innovating-with-digital-in-mind/

Klein, D. Domino's New Platform Rewards Points for Competitors' Pizza. Retrieved from

https://www.qsrmagazine.com/pizza/dominos-new-platform-rewards-points-competitors-pizza

Siu, E. 10 Companies with the Best Digital Marketing Campaigns. Retrieved from

https://www.singlegrain.com/digital-marketing/best-online-marketing-companies/

Digital Marketing case Study: Airbnb's Van Gogh Bnb Collaboration. Retrieved from

https://www.targetinternet.com/digital-marketing-case-study-airbnbs-van-gogh-bnb-collaboration/

Evans, B. The Death Of The CMO: 10 Insights On The Engagement Economy From Marketo CEO Steve Lucas. Retrieved from

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2017/10/06/the-death-of-the-cmo-in-the-engagement-economy-10-insights-from-marketo-ceo-steve-lucas/#26450c25343a

Griffiths, J. A. Marketer's Guide to Selecting the Best Images for Your Content. Retrieved from

https://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/selecting-the-best-images-for-your-content/