Set the tone with the creative platform
(Part 2 in a series on helping you plan and execute your marketing communications pieces. Read Part 1, Accomplish your marketing goals with a well-developed marketing plan.)

Fact: The most common form of feedback on a marketing piece is not how effectively it conveys a message, but rather the reader's personal reaction to the color and images in the piece.

This alone makes a creative platform one of the most important planning devices in your arsenal. Whereas a marketing plan (see last issue) helps you define overall marketing activities for a product, event, or marketing campaign, the creative platform defines the qualitative aspects of all your marketing pieces, such as:

• Tone and style of visuals and copy
• Brand personality of the product, event, or campaign
• Visual themes, including color palette
• Size and length of each marcom piece

What does a creative platform actually accomplish, and how can Jumping Bean help? Imagine this scenario: Your creatives write and design a 12-page, 4-color product family brochure—only to have the CEO tell you that it's ugly. What is the problem here? Not that the CEO thought the brochure was unattractive (everyone's entitled to an opinion), but that the focus of the review was on the appearance of the piece, not the message.

By not agreeing on the fundamentals early on, it grinds everything to a halt—forcing your creative staff to rework ideas and redesign layouts, delaying other marketing projects, and incurring more expensive printing costs. In today's economy, increased cost is something you definitely want to avoid.

This is why a creative platform is so important. By getting buy-in on the creative platform before anything has been created, the individual pieces of a campaign can proceed effortlessly. Your creative team can then focus subsequent reviews on the accuracy and effectiveness of each piece—rather than being distracted by visuals.

If you don't know how to develop a creative platform, Jumping Bean can work with your creative team to customize one for you. Working with your in-house or contract designers, we can help define the tone and create a brand personality that runs throughout all of your marketing efforts.

For more information on how Jumping Bean can help you develop a creative platform, call us at (773) 562-6093 or send an email to info@jumpbean.com.

If you found this article interesting and insightful, forward it to a friend or coworker, or point them to www.jumpbean.com.

Resources

Kiamy, Dee: High-Tech Marketing Companion. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley, 1993.

King, Janice M.: Writing High-Tech Copy That Sells. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1995.

Next issue: Communicate the right messages using a document guidelines form

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