There's a pretty common adage that goes around about copywriting that your goal as a copywriter is to keep people reading.
Which means your opening line has to do a lot of heavy lifting.
Taking that one step further, there's the cliché that people tend to judge books by their covers. The bummer about that cliché is that it's true. In this article in the Scottish Sun, they reference a survey where 52% of people make their choice about the novel they want to read because of the art on the cover jacket.
Only 1 in 5 surveyed cared who wrote the novel.
There's probably room here to research the anthropological origin of how our brains react to certain colors or beauty or design but that's not where I'm going with this.
I want to talk about the role of creative assets in a campaign: your social posts, the landing page, the open graph images, the email designs, the facebook ads, whatever might be included in your company's typical marketing campaign.
As a marketer, you're probably going to have the conversation at some point in your career about "shipping" something. There's a camp of marketers who prioritize speed over everything. The thought is that it doesn't have to be perfect, it has to be good enough - but the importance is speed to market.
I think it's totally fair. The world changes fast right now and content can dip in and out of relevance faster than you can create it.
But I think there are channels and content mediums that are conducive to speed. I think a podcast is a good example. Booking a guest, finding time for an interview, and recording the conversation can be a weekly effort.
However, if you're looking to build out a cross-channel campaign, there is value in spending the time on the creative so you can contribute to a conversation that's already being had in a new way.
Let's go back to the "judge a book by its cover" statistic. 52% of avid readers choose their next novel because of the cover art. Aesthetics are important, and if you want the public to engage with your campaign, you need to be aware of that.
It seems that this effect is even more prevalent in the digital world:
And while this data is geared towards "website design" it reveals an important effect: people are hella judge-y when it comes to first impressions. And if the goal of your marketing campaign is to reach a new audience, you better make sure that your creative is wearing its Sunday's finest.
Your takeaway from this section: Speed to production is a valid viewpoint, but there are marketing channels that are better suited for a speedy approach. But if you're looking to bring a new audience to your content and website with your campaign, they will be judging the creative.
Tom Roach has a really good article on his site titled, Most marketing is bad because it ignores the most basic data.
His main argument in the piece is that a lot of marketing strategists dive really deep into data without looking at some fundamental data-points of human behavior, first.
I like the way he summarizes his view on creative, so I'll just steal it:
"Market and brand size are together the biggest driver of advertising profitability, but the 2nd biggest factor is the quality of creative execution[6]. In fact it can impact ROI by a factor of 12. Creative execution is not ‘colouring in’: it matters more than nearly everything else."
I wasn't able to find a deeper analysis of the profit multiplier study, but I have a basic theory. If we reference the first section of this article, we saw how much first impressions matter. Let's take that example and carry it into a local artisan's market.
It's a sunny morning in October and you're walking through the market. There are tents everywhere, but you're generally staying out of them because you're nervous that it will be hard to leave the tent without buying something from the smiling creator behind the counter. But then you pass one where they feature some of their most beautiful goods in a place where you can browse them relatively privately.
They get you in the door. At that point, it's a lot more likely that you spend the time looking through what they have to offer. Maybe you buy something, maybe you don't, but it's a lot more likely that you buy something than it was when you were just walking by the tents.
I think creative works for campaigns this way. It rips someone out of their scroll and, for just one second, causes them to stop and engage. And getting someone's attention is a marketer's job. Once you have their attention, your content should be able to deliver enough value where they are willing to trade their information.
Your takeaway from this section: Other than market share and brand size, creative is the biggest driver of advertising profitability.
Not every marketing team has graphic designers in their payroll. And speed to production with marketing does matter.
There are undoubtedly things working against marketers looking to produce campaigns with top-notch creative.
And I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's worth fighting for.