If you find yourself staring at a blank Google Doc waiting for an idea to appear, you're not alone. It may seem harsh, but marketing is a creative job. At the heart of marketing is finding creative solutions to everyday and special business problems. From low site traffic to unclear product positioning, marketers use a combination of skill, strategy, and intuition to improve problems that appear to the untrained eye as mere indicators. As with many creative jobs, marketers are susceptible to burnout and creative ruts. This is especially true as economic instability increases pressure to perform within tight budgets and show unprecedented year-over-year growth. To keep your creative cup flowing, you have to find a way to refill it.
Despite what you've been told, downloading a blatant lead generation guide from that famous CRM won't give you inspiration for your next campaign. Especially if you look over your shoulder to see what your competitors are doing. If you spend hours watching YouTube videos by “industry experts” with clickbait thumbnails, you’re even less likely to find it.
Do you know where to find what you're looking for? Outside. Outside of your current daily routine, outside of your comfort zone, literally outside of nature.
It's scientifically proven that getting outside can make you feel better and instantly make you feel more connected to your community and the world around you. While remote and hybrid work allows for flexibility nearly impossible in a traditional 9-to-5 office, its pitfalls can be incredibly isolating in an already highly fragmented society. It lies in the fact that there is gender.
Loneliness is on the rise, with three in five American adults reporting feeling lonely sometimes or all the time. By 2025, approximately 22% of the U.S. workforce is projected to be fully remote. Although most employees still commute to the office every day, the majority of the work we do today tends to be done behind a screen. This is especially powerful in jobs like marketing, where the goal is to understand and influence human behavior. In this article for Forbes, Kian Bakhtiari says: “We can work from home and talk to people through digital screens. Social interaction is a futile activity when viewed through the lens of cold numbers. But when viewed through human eyes, social interaction is a wasteful activity. Interaction is what makes us essentially human.”
The recipient of every marketing campaign you send out into the world is a human being who will reject or react to what you are trying to sell or promote. When asked who your target audience is, you might tell them their age range, gender breakdown, household income, and even their general interests. Tell your friend something like, “This person is Ben. He's mostly male, he's 30 to 35, he's probably got more than a college education, and he has disposable income.” Never introduced. It's no wonder you feel stuck. How can you talk to your audience if you don't know them very well?
What if instead you took the time to single out your target users as individuals? What would happen if you immersed yourself in the reality of the average consumer? What do you think you would learn?
Let's say you work for a national shoe brand that has brick-and-mortar stores across the country, and you decide to stop by one of them. Take a moment to step into the product and observe the people actually working on it. You may find that a significant number of your shoppers wear clothing from fitness brands outside of your category. Or maybe a bunch of shoppers walk in with coffee from a popular local chain in hand. Or maybe a bunch of shoppers come in with coffee beans. dog. If you're paying attention, these quick exchanges can yield valuable information that would otherwise require large amounts of first-party data to collect. You might also find out that shoppers like to wear athleisure and take advantage of that. We found that they enjoy coffee and patronize local brands. They have pets and take them everywhere. You might come up with an idea for a collaboration with a sportswear brand, a local coffee shop pop-up may follow, or you might consider an idea for a pet collection. These small details and mundane interactions are often overlooked, but when you truly connect, they can open the floodgates of new ideas and inspiration. As a marketer, trust that your unique eyes can see things that others don't. That's why you're in this role in the first place.
We often see brands within the same category releasing similar products, choosing similar designs, and even reposting the same memes. Who sent the memo? This uniform wave that plagues many niche markets is the result of overworked marketers who are expected to “keep up” with the industry rather than take risks with newness. Very likely. Whatever the cause, the solution is simple. Stop looking to others for inspiration. Brands that stand out today are often one-of-a-kind, and it's obvious when they're stolen. Step outside your comfort zone. A 1950s bakery ad, a sign hanging delicately from a flower shop's awning, a conversation overheard on the street. Be open to inspiration coming from strange places.
A Deloitte survey of 1,000 full-time employees in the United States found that 77% of those surveyed had experienced burnout at least once in their current job. The same study dispelled the myth that if you're passionate about what you do, you won't feel stressed. Of those who said they were very passionate about their work, 64% of them said they felt stressed or burnt out. Slowing down is a privilege that many people don't have, especially those in high-pressure roles, but what's the alternative? Producing work that you know isn't up to your creative potential. Are you “borrowing” ideas from your competitors? Slowing down and getting out of your routine will eliminate the noise and restore your connection to your gut.
As long as decisions need to be quantified to get buy-in, you'll never win the intuition vs. data debate. Yes, data is critical to both measuring campaign effectiveness and informing future campaigns. At the same time, your gut is constantly talking to you. It tells her to turn right instead of left, tells her to pair her blue jeans with penny loafers, and points out an old faded sign with an incredible image and copy. Just as you can't replace the value of human connection, you can't abandon your intuition for data. Marketing is a human-centered job, no matter how much technology enables what we do. Strengthening your connection with nature and humanity will help form the core of your work. After all, we are humans selling things to other humans.
