Creative Marketing

The purpose of this book is to examine the concept of creative marketing metaphorically and how it can enable the marketer to establish and maintain competitive advantage in the marketplace. Creative marketing is used as an umbrella term to capture concepts from marketing and creativity. Creative marketing is found in innovative, risk-taking and proactive small firms and micro-enterprises, but is also practised in larger organisations that embrace forward-thinking strategies rather than using formulaic past practices.

This chapter examines the origins and growth of creativity as a research topic in a variety of disciplines which, until recently, was a neglected area of research. A number of factors have contributed to the neglect of creativity as a research topic. One of them is the belief that creativity is a mystical phenomenon or spiritual process that does not fit with academic scrutiny. The early twentieth century schools of psychology such as structuralism, functionalism and behaviourism ignored creativity; while populist creativity ‘experts’ promoted creative thinking without substantiation. However, there are now journals devoted to creativity research such as the Journal of Creative Behavior and the Creativity Research Journal, as well as innovation-related publications such as the International Journal of Innovation Management and Creativity and Innovation Management. There is a lack of agreement regarding the location of creativity (in an individual, as a product or as a process) but there is acknowledgement that it occurs on different levels such as the personal (P-Creativity), the historical/societal (H-Creativity), the organisational (O-Creativity) and even animal creativity (A-Creativity).

The opening chapters of this book contain a detailed justification of the adoption of a creative approach to marketing research. This chapter develops these notions in more detail whereby practitioners and theorists within marketing and the arts can learn from each other’s disciplines in order to form more appropriate understanding of marketing phenomena.

The measurement of creativity has been the subject of long debate and little consensus, leading to dissatisfaction and disagreement among the cohort of researchers from a variety of disciplines interested in the field. Some have proposed that creativity be measured according to process improvement or features of the person or product. Others have suggested that creativity be measured by the quality of the response to the product by the user. There are also those who suggest that creativity cannot be measured. This school is often in the arts where creativity is seen as cerebral, unknowable and fleeting in nature. Overall, hundreds of studies have been conducted into creativity research.

As demonstrated in earlier chapters, marketing has been dominated by the logical positivist school of thought that stressed objectivity, rationality and measurement. However, there are other traditions that can be traced back to a pioneering article by Kotier and Levy in 1969. These traditions broaden the marketing concept and establish criteria for knowledge in the discipline.

As we have demonstrated, researchers of the larger firm are now beginning to question the validity of conventional marketing theory. Like the impresario Serge Diaghilev, whose Ballets Russes redefined twentieth-century artistic collaboration and teamwork in its vital years (1909–1929), twenty-first century marketing needs its change champion. In those vital years, ballet was transformed into a modern, vibrant art. Diaghilev brokered remarkable arrangements between dance and the other arts, such as music with Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Serge Prokofiev; painting with Pablo Picasso, André Derain and Henri Matisse; writers such as Jean Cocteau and designers such as Natalia Gontcharova.