FUSION #neosletter 5

Categories: Insights, NewsletterTags: , , , , , , , , , Published On: 28/03/2024
This surreal picture combines different subjects covered in the newsletter. It shows a lone fighter aircraft, used to symbolise a maverick creative person, flying into a flock of starlings, which symbolises creative collaboration.

‘Collaboration’ with a twist of ‘adaption’ is the flavour of this month’s curated creative content – from collaborating to create beautiful brands to creative in-housing vs creative outsourcing. Creative mavericks look to be out in favour of creative partnerships. And just as collaboration trumps specialisation in market research, so it does when it comes to creativity as well.

#business: Brands as a creative act

We’re big fans of both Yoko Ono and Mary Portas. So, we just had to include Mary’s post on Yoko. It’s a homage, but one that’s relevant to creativity, brands and business. Mary tells us why: “In many ways, there’re parallels between Yoko’s vision of participatory art and business. As [branding guru] Marty Neumeier says, “a brand is not what you say it is, it’s what they say it is”.

The future of marketing is, according to Mary, “about collaboration”. We concur. But we’d add that it isn’t only about collaborating with clients or consumers. Beautiful brands are dependent on collaboration up and down the supply chain. It’s why we maintain that the best creative solutions come from in-house teams working with agencies as well as their intended audience.

#scalingbusiness: Creative failures are good

James Bridgman‘s hotly anticipated third article on creativity for scaling businesses is out now. This piece focuses on creativity as a route to better results across the business, beyond the marketing department. We like the concept of ‘shiny object disease’ and support the notion that ‘failure is good’. Paradoxically, failure is a healthy part of the creative process and key to its success. As a rule, it leads to better creative decisions and stronger results. Failing fast, or what we like to call ‘failing forward’, is also necessary to business survival when the marketplace is in flux, demanding adaption and innovation at speed.

#creativetrend: Are you in or out?

Are you in-housing with the intention of accelerating creativity? Yes, in-housing really is a trend! Campaign UK recently looked at what’s driving it among retailers. But it isn’t only affecting this sector. The advantages of producing more creative work in-house when you need to get things out the door quickly are clear. But do these conditions result in the best creative work? Asda’s Former Senior Director of Marketing and Communications, Stephi Brett-Lee, told Campaign that the “best model” is a mix of in-house teams and agencies. She also said: “The most important thing is for the relationship across both worlds to be strong and then you’ll develop the best campaigns together.”

We NEOs pride ourselves on our adaptability. We fit and flex to work as an extension of client teams. Our aim isn’t to replicate what client teams can do unless this is what’s needed. We want to add value where it counts most and to expand their capabilities. One way we do this is by applying our cross-sector knowledge. Through the cross-pollination of ideas we develop new concepts, treatments and approaches. To our minds, the best work is always the result of collaboration. That’s why we don’t think the decision to in-house or outsource creativity should be an either/or one.

Read our article on in-housing vs outsourcing creativity: ‘In, out, shake it all about’.

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“More than simply working together, collaboration actually produces something. A spark, an idea, a solution… It’s generative. It’s innovative. And it’s never been more needed.”
– Annie Auerbach, Starling Co-founder

#creativeagency: Maverick or partnership?

Which one gets your vote? Do you have an opinion? Do you care? This Campaign article looks at different approaches to coming up with creative ideas. Some senior creatives prefer to come up with ideas on their own. Some creative agencies like a more structured approach to working through ideas as a group. Other agencies have a far looser style that involves the views of the wider team, not just those of the core creatives. The psychology and the successes are no doubt telling. For us, though, all ideas are the result of some form of collaboration. And the greater and more inclusive the collaboration, the better the result.

Plus our ‘Tiny Dancer’ article where we debated Mark Ritson’s idea of creative rock stars.

#marketresearch: Collaboration trumps specialism in creativity as well as research

Here’s an insightful piece by Starling Co-founder Annie Auerbach for Research Live. Annie highlights how collaboration trumps specialisation. This is true for lots of sectors and something that we NEOs support when it comes to creative comms. The article contains just too many quotable extracts, but here are a few…

“More than simply working together, collaboration actually produces something. A spark, an idea, a solution… It’s generative. It’s innovative. And it’s never been more needed.”

Specialisation, Annie says, can lead to “myopia” and “narrow-sightedness”. Generalisation, on the other hand, lends itself to being more open, flexible, inclusive – and collaborative.

While generalists can partner with experts, it’s their job to “…pay attention, connect the dots and spot patterns.” Generalists can “…weave it all together and get to fresh perspectives and overlooked places.” The answer, Annie argues, “…will be at the intersections rather than in one person’s head.”

Hear, hear, we couldn’t agree more. Great minds and a greater one as we say. Thanks for this article, Annie! 😉

The magic’s in what we do together. Let’s co-create, Team NEO

[This content was originally posted on LinkedIn. Follow us on LinkedIn.]

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