Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Dear Dona,

"I dont want to work just for the sake of working but for the sake of my creativity."

Years ago, I wanted to be an artist, I wanted to be a fine art painter. I'm serious.

I thought the notion of selling was some how "cheap"!

I wanted to paint and to create great art.

Sadly, the career prospects for budding artists were not that great in the north of England back in 1982, and because at some point I knew I'd have to eat, pay bills, and cover little things like rent, instead of becoming a painter, I spent three years studying graphic design.

Only AFTER I left college did I begin learning about design.

You don't WANT to work JUST for the sake of working?

Dona, I'm sorry to burst your bubble here but there are millions
of people who would gladly take your place.

People that are out of work. People that are close to foreclosure and bankruptcy. People in danger of losing their children to social services. People who have lost ... or who may lose ... everything they own because they lost their job six months ago.

Or a year ago.

Or two years ago.

And sadly for you, the vast majority of these people are far more experienced and way more skilled than you are.

You want to gain wider exposure and experience in the field of marketing and use your creativity for the betterment of any organization?

Splendid.

But in order to do this you'll need to take off your rose tinted specs. Sorry. I know you don't want to hear this but you're as
well hearing it from me as you are anyone else.

Although creativity is important, in truth, marketing and advertising are not concerned with being creative, nor are they avenues into which anyone with any real sense of business will tread until they've got their heads around a few basic facts.

Marketing and advertising are mainly concerned with just one thing: selling.

They're concerned with selling because the roles of advertising
and marketing in commerce are generally as follows:

1. identifying needs, pains, and problems,
2. offering solid, simple, tangible solutions to those needs and pains,
3. generating attention about the benefits of those solutions,
4. stimulating demand for the value of those solutions and the eradication of those points of pain,
5. installing simple pathways—devoid of clutter—to hasten the connection between the pain and the solution,
6. making the availability of the solution simple and problem free,
7. offering buyers points of solid proof and risk reversal to make buying easier, quicker, and less troublesome,
8. giving great value for the exchange of goods for money,
9. providing proof so that buyers can tell their friends (who in turn, may have the same problem or need), so that those friends are then inclined to buy as well.

In short, advertising and marketing are designed to create identify pain points, provide solutions, create demand, and drive sales.

They're also designed to increase revenues in order to generate profits that are then reinvested in order to create new products and services for people to buy.

Advertising creates the demand.

Marketing then sustains the demand.

I can't tell you which course you ought to pursue.

That choice must be yours.

But what I can tell you is that you need to first define your meaning of creativity.

To me, the development of a great marketing plan that increases sales is creative. To you, it might not be.

Being creative isn't simply a matter of expressing one's self through one's art. It's about expressing one's self through all kinds of astonishingly diverse channels. And ultimately, creativity is where one finds it.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Wilmington, DE, USA