Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Creativity”
May 19, 2016 by Chuck Frey We’re living in the Creative Age, where ideas are the coin of the realm. Are you prepared to leverage the opportunities it can bring your way? During the Industrial Age, brawn ruled the day. Only a relative handful of leaders and managers were paid to think creatively about the organization’s present health and future …
January 12, 2016 by Chuck Frey In today’s highly competitive world, B2B customers have more choices than ever. In many industries, too many me-too products and services are chasing too little business. Almost all of the marketers within these industries tend to rely on the same old types of content and distribution channels. Everyone tends to promote their products and …
December 1, 2015 Western Union banks on its customers’ passions to inspire remarkable content. Laston Charriez, the company’s senior vice president of marketing for the Americas, explains how it innovates in a conservative industry. Few brands have been household names as long as Western Union. Launched in 1851 as the New York & Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company (the company …
August 4, 2015 “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, is creativity.”– Charles Mingus The biggest challenge that enterprise B2B organizations face is how hard it is to talk about what they sell in simple language. There’s few resources to help B2B companies maneuver through this quagmire, which is why Margaret Molloy, Global CMO and Head of …
April 28, 2015 I read an article the other day that said that people are hired for hard skills and fired for a lack of soft skills. I’ve found this to be true, and even more so for marketers as our pace of change keeps picking up speed. I listen to marketers talk about the struggles they have in their …
February 3, 2015 Thought leadership is a common approach for companies wanting to establish credibility within their industry and stand apart from the crowd — and for good reason. It’s true that thought leaders tend to be the most successful professionals in their fields, and because of this, have more influence over their audience. The problem is that people throw …
November 11, 2014 How buyers buy has changed how we need to think and act as marketers. If you love uncertainty, then being a marketer today feels like being a kid on summer vacation – so many opportunities, ideas and inspiration. But apprehensive marketers are holding onto traditional practices. They think that if they ignore the disruption, they won’t have …
September 30, 2014 For all the change that’s taken place in how buyers buy, it’s no wonder that marketers feel uncertain. It’s not just about learning new skillsets and making sure teams are staffed and equipped with enough resources. It’s about realizing, understanding and then doing something about the new roles that we need to have as marketers and marketing …
July 1, 2014 What’s better than sitting in a bland conference room, sun beating through the windows and fluorescent lights buzzing while your boss drones on about a brainstorming session? Probably everything. Brainstorming. It always begins with that cliché, “Remember, there are no bad ideas.” Which actually isn’t true. There are lots of bad ideas: The mullet. Parachute pants. New …
Photo caption: Steve Ligouri, (left) president, Ligouri Innovations and 2014-2015 BMA Board Chair and Kathy Button Bell, CMO, Emerson, and 2013-2014 BMA Board Chair kickoff the BMA 2014 conference in Chicago May 28. Saturday, May 31, 2014 At the Business Marketing Association’s annual conference there were five themes that consistently rang loud and clear. (As a disclaimer, I’m on the …
March 31, 2014 There’s a belief that in order to be truly creative, marketers must unshackle themselves from anything that could hinder their process. Give them their creative freedom. Let them have no bounds. The sky’s the limit. FLY ICARUS, FLY! In other words, we want them to “think outside the box.” But marketers are like toddlers on Christmas morning; …
January 4, 2014 I had a woman call me today from a SaaS company asking if I could help her with a problem with which she struggled. The story isn’t new. We’ve all experienced it. Marketing was creating tools that sales never used. That part wasn’t surprising. But the funny part (as in odd, not “ha ha”) came from how …
