What is Competitive Creativity™? Creativity's ethereal nature means it struggles to be taken seriously in tech boardrooms. But every business that wants to stay in business and grow, understands another 'c' word - competition. Employing objective creativity into your marketing is a proven commercial driver. At LogicLogicMagic, we coined the phrase Competitive Creativity™ to describe this approach, and differentiate it from more subjective design-led creative approaches. The objective of Competitive Creativity™ is to increase the probability of tech-buying committees remembering your marketing, then considering your products and services. Smart tech marketers know they are competing to be salient, and Competitive Creativity™ helps achieve this. Think of it more as a marketing armoury, than marketing artistry. How competitive is your brand positioning?
Competitive Creativity™ side-steps subjective like or dislike, by having the clear objective of amplifying your brand's positioning in the prospect or customer's minds. Making memorable marketing is the outcome of Competitive Creativity™, and it always starts with the brand positioning. Take a critical look at your brand positioning, Does the positioning reflect the traditional three 'C's - customer, company & competition? Where is the proposition clearly articulated for audiences to see? Is how it's expressed distinctive? Does the positioning feel competitive?
Ideally a tech organisation's brand positioning will have been elevated up the marketing benefits ladder, beyond product benefit, into at least the customer benefit, or most effective of all, an emotional benefit.
In our experience though, with tech brands, this is rarely the case. Where product marketing exists as a silo within a tech organisation, the brand positioning rarely extends beyond product benefit.
A competitive brand positioning is often expressed as a philosophy that accommodates and informs a future product road map. 'Think different' for Apple is the classic example,
that allowed the same company to market computers, music, phones and watches successfully under one brand. If you feel that your brand positioning feels unclear, uncompetitive or uninspiring, the chances are your prospects do too - we can help with that. Well chosen words, succinctly expressing your brand's point of view on the world are a core constituent of Competitive Creativity™.
How competitive are your branding assets?
Distinctive branding assets shouldn't be a new term to seasoned marketers, familiar with the work of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. They are the cornerstone of Competitive Creativity™, building the familiarity that drives brand consideration. Creative visual, verbal and sonic short-cuts that keep organisations front of mind for the 95% of B2B buyers not currently in market. For branding assets to be competitive, they need to be created and maintained with an eye on the competition, since they exist to set you apart.
Many B2B tech brands suffer from low brand awareness. To a trained advertising eye it is not hard to see why. A total lack of distinctive branding assets, inspired by mediocre, design-driven brand guidelines that brand-cuff communications into banality. Branding so uncompetitive it's commercially criminal.
When LogicLogicMagic first engage with a technology brand, we make an assessment of the brand from a buyer's perspective and plot that onto our Ownable/Memorable matrix. This matrix reflects the proven effectiveness or competitiveness of various creative devices in developing and maintaining mental availability for brands.
Transposing the branding assets of most B2B tech brands creates a matrix like this:
Does this feel familiar? Traditional branding design elements are always well represented: colours, fonts and graphic design language. But to anyone other than designers, these elements are rarely distinctive, ownable or memorable - simply table stakes, not Competitive Creativity™. Competitive Creativity™ means investing in bespoke brand characters and emotional storytelling. Harnessing the power of humour, music or sonic hooks to keep your brand front of mind.
At LogicLogicMagic, to prove we practice what we preach, here is our armoury of distinctive assets. At the heart of the armoury sits a memorable character-driven brand film that tells the story of why we exist, alongside a content programme, which includes a card game built around our philosophy. We won't be mistaken for any other agency.
How does Competitive Creativity™ drive growth?
Businesses don't buy from brands they don't know. Familiarity is the single biggest driver of consideration and trust. Competitive Creativity™ drives awareness and familiarity faster.
As a strategic approach, it filters down into everything we do for our tech clients across the tactical marketing mix, from advertising to content programmes to ABM to events. We can create or sharpen a brand positioning, then work down through the funnel or buyer journey to sales enablement, with a media neutral/audience-centric approach.
If you feel your tech brand would benefit from our Competitive Creativity™ analysis against your three biggest competitors, using our Ownable/Memorable matrix, then let sam@logiclogicmagic.com know who you consider the three competitors to be.
From an external perspective, we'll then identify perceived areas of brand strength and weakness, indicating how competitive we feel your marketing creativity appears. That seems like a pretty competitive and creative offer to us!