The Balance of Creative Genius and Getting Sh*t Done

Balancing creativity with efficiency is crucial for the success of any marketing campaign. For this episode of B2B Marketing Agency Insights, our CEO Austin LaRoche discusses what makes this balance between creativity and efficiency essential and how to achieve it.

Video transcription below:

Welcome back to B2B Marketing Agency Insights. I’m your host, Austin LaRoche, CEO of ATAK Interactive. Today, I want to talk about a balancing act, and it’s not an easy one. What we are going to talk about is the balance between creative genius and getting stuff done.

I have many clients, and some of them range a little too extreme in one way or the other. Either we are always taking forever because we are waiting for the perfect idea or something that we think is so grand that it could go – wait for it – “viral.” Conversely, I have others who are like, “Just go, just do it, pass, try, go.” And it’s like, well, we should put a little bit of thought into the creative because the truth is it’s a balancing act. No matter what level of marketing – it can be a simple ad campaign, or it can be a big, full-scale national print, TV, radio, everything campaign – you need to be able to have a balancing act of the creative and the “We got to go.” This is because we always see paralysis by analysis over here with the creatives. “Oh, I don’t know if this is right. I don’t know. I think it’s good.” But at some point, you got to make a decision. And then, on the other side, where you have the “Oh, alright, just test creative, it doesn’t matter” people, you are losing a lot of dollars to testing by not really coming up with something that’s clever or speaks to your customer.

So how do you balance that? I think a good way to start is to start with that “Build-Measure-Learn” concept from startups. You do want to do some testing, but also give yourself some time and effort on the creative side to at least have a few different options where you go, “You know what? I’m proud of this. This is unique. This is cool. This is different. This is something that I want to hang my hat on.” I really do feel like if you can combine those two things – if you can balance those things – that is when the marketing gets really strong because part of what you are fighting is the art versus the science.

“Oh my God, this is the big, beautiful, pretty thing that people are just going to connect with.” When you hear the numbers telling you how people are connecting, how people are converting, you gotta be able to blend them. It’s always great when you have people on your team who have both those skillsets and can work congruently together to get the job done.

What’s not good is when you are way too far in the extreme, one way or the other. When you are building out your teams or building out your marketing campaigns, give yourself enough time to get the right creative genius you need to be proud of and also, go out there and get stuff done. Avoid that paralysis by analysis. Do some testing, see how everything is working, and then get these two functions to grow together, to market together, and eventually thrive together.

That’s it for today. Again, I’m your host, Austin LaRoche, saying good luck growing.