A creative role can be fun and engaging, but it does come with its own challenges. There can be pressure from clients and competitors to produce innovative, eye-catching campaigns that outlets want to cover, time and time again.
If you feel like you’ve hit a creative wall, there are some key things you can do to help nurture your budding ideas and create your best, most creative work.
Keep up to date with the news
In the current digital media age, the news agenda doesn’t stop moving. This can make it tough when pushing out a time-sensitive story, but it can also be brilliant when needing instant inspiration.
There’s always an angle in the news which you can incorporate into your campaign release or use to get your creative juices flowing.
For example, if you have a financial client, you can jump on the recent stories about cryptocurrency scams, construct an informative yet captivating piece about how to be safe when investing money, and how to spot the signs of fake investments.
Brainstorming with different people
Although it sounds cliched, the adage “no idea is a bad idea” really can be true. So, it’s worth bringing different members of your whole team together, regardless of the clients they work on, to brainstorm any potential ideas the team has.
It can be easy to get bogged down and stuck in your thoughts when you’ve worked on the same client for such a long time. Your colleagues who work with other clients may have ideas that are completely off-topic and irrelevant, but their words might just inspire you or someone else in your team to come up with something fantastic.
Know your client inside and out
While it’s great to think of something weird and wonderful for your client, it really does help if you do your background work on them. How are you supposed to hone your creative skills when you don’t fully understand your client’s aims?
There’s no point in going the extra mile for a campaign that may be brilliant if it doesn’t align with your client’s message and values.
By understanding the needs of the company, you can shape a fantastic campaign concept with your team whilst knowing it aligns with their aims and objectives. This also saves a lot of back and forth with the client, so you can focus on what you do best, which is getting organic links!
Make the most of current trends
If you’ve found yourself stuck in a cycle of pitching the same idea at different brainstorms in the hope that your client will suddenly change their minds, then you need to change up how you think about creating a campaign.
To overcome stale ideation, have a list in the back of your notebook and constantly update it with current social trends or platforms which people are using to create jaw-dropping campaigns.
For example, TikTok is a super popular platform right now, so write it down in your notebook. If there are any trends circulating platforms, such as the ‘red flag’ trend, or the ‘eat a spoonful of cinnamon’ trend, make a note of these.
It sounds tedious and somewhat simple, but chances are these trends or platforms might be relevant for your current work. A simple list can really help spark an idea that could be brilliant as a fully focused campaign or even a proactive piece which you can get a few easy links out of.
These are just four ways in which you can maximise your creativity when looking for that next big campaign. If you want even more tips on upping your creative and social game, why not check out our other pieces over on the C3 blog.
