Art in Marketing: How Creativity Drives Brand Differentiation

29 Mar 2024 | Digital Marketing

At its core, art is the manifestation of human creativity and imagination. Art can play a role in shaping a brand’s image. Often, this involves incorporating artistic elements that reflect the brand’s values and personality. Leading luxury brands have been recognized to commission unique artworks to establish the ambiance for their products. Whether it’s for stores or promotional materials, they might engage artists to create exclusive pieces. Ultimately, leveraging art can contribute to building a product’s reputation, especially through collaborations with renowned artists or established art institutions.

What is Brand Differentiation?

Differentiation is a crucial factor in the success of most profitable strategies. It has driven people to wait in long lines at Apple stores for the latest iPhone, attracted millions to watch Apple Events online, and established Amazon as the go-to online shopping destination.

However, many eCommerce disruptors have found it relatively easy to thrive by leveraging audience and personalization data, allowing them to understand their customers’ preferences and behavior. This made the focus on differentiation less urgent, especially for disruptors heavily relying on direct-response advertising.

The landscape is changing now with Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) update and Google’s phasing out of third-party cookies. Direct-response advertisers face challenges due to reduced data availability for crafting effective campaigns. Additionally, the rise of AI marketing tools has leveled the playing field, eliminating the competitive advantage once held by industry leaders. Consequently, companies are redirecting their attention to a variable they can control but may have overlooked – creative.

Creative differentiation is now considered the key for brands combating ad fatigue, narrating visually compelling stories, and guiding their audience through the purchase funnel. Shifting from optimizing efficiency to crafting visually engaging narratives requires a phased approach.

Learning Why Creative Matters

The pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital platforms among consumers, compelled small businesses to shift from in-person to online operations, and prompted leaders in traditional industries to embrace eCommerce.

If competition was intense before the pandemic, capturing your audience’s attention now feels like an ongoing challenge.

Creative stands out as the most critical tool for advertisers to enhance performance and achieve growth.

It’s a factor that brands can control, facilitating easy differentiation. However, it’s not just about creating visually appealing ads.

Creative serves as a means for building authentic connections with your audience, providing delight, and persuading them that choosing your products is the right decision.

Nearly 90% of consumers emphasize the importance of authenticity when deciding which brands to support, and 70% desire personalized experiences.

In the absence of typical data points, relying on creative coupled with testing becomes the solution to the privacy-personalization paradox.

Leveraging Creative Differentiation for Your Brand: Strategies and Success Stories

In today’s rapidly changing consumer landscape, adopting a test-and-learn mentality in creative work is essential. Real-world scenarios, such as product launches, driving social commerce, and combating ad fatigue, demand a proactive approach to creative testing. Here are strategies that eCommerce disruptors can implement, along with success stories from brands that have successfully executed them:

1. Go Mobile-First with Instant Experience:

- Strategy: Embrace the mobile experience using Facebook’s Instant Experience, a full-screen ad that engages users instantly.
- Success Story: Facebook found that 78% of online purchases from their ads occur on mobile. By using Instant Experience, brands can offer a seamless mobile interaction. Metrics like view time, link clicks, and page views help refine audience preferences.

2. Unlock High Ticket Audiences with Collection Ads:

- Strategy: Use Collection Ads, powered by product catalogs, to combine images and videos with multiple products. This format diversifies placements and attracts high-value customers.
- Success Story: Komplett Group, a Nordic eCommerce player, faced low conversions for high-ticket items. Using dynamic product ads with Hunch’s Creative Studio, they saw a lift in conversions by reaching new audiences more efficiently.

3. Drive Social Commerce with Creative Ads:

- Strategy: Utilize creative ads for social commerce. G Adventures, a leading adventure travel company, employed automated localized video ads and enhanced dynamic product ads after COVID-19.
- Success Story: G Adventures, with the help of Hunch’s automated ad solution, reduced setup time and personalized customer journeys. Automated ads contributed to a quicker recovery after pandemic-related disruptions.

4.Fight Ad Fatigue through Creative Diversification:

- Strategy: Combat ad fatigue by running two visually distinct creatives. Facebook’s experiment revealed that creative diversification leads to improved key performance metrics and reduced average campaign costs.
- Insight: With increased social media usage during the pandemic, advertisers need creative diversification to counter ad fatigue and maintain audience engagement.

These strategies showcase how creative differentiation is crucial for eCommerce success, offering innovative approaches to connect with audiences in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Final Thoughts

For brands seeking equilibrium between creating visually engaging narratives and maintaining agility in the market, the initial stages of this process can be challenging and daunting. This is also why digital marketing services in Malaysia are very in demand.

Success in the realm of paid social demands a harmonious blend of art and science — prioritizing the right metrics and continuous testing to align with people’s evolving needs.

While the significance of creative in driving both short-term and long-term profitability was never in doubt, brands often relegated it to the background due to underlying misconceptions.

The forthcoming era of creative ads is poised to reshape the way people shop and how brands ignite action in the post-ATT and post-cookie world, marking a transformative phase in the advertising landscape.