Anyone who works in a creative industry understands the highs and lows that are involved in the normal creative process… From the initial elation on the conception of a new idea, to the despair that what you have come up with is terrible, back to the belief that it does have merit or might just be incredible.

This creative process is something we relish at Purple Riot and is the reason most of us got into marketing in the first place. However, we have discovered a few ways of dealing with all the creative drama and have decided to pull together our top 5 tips…

1. Research first

It’s easy to get carried away when you’re creative . The desire to jump straight to the fun part – coming up with ideas or concepts – is natural but research serves two key purposes (and ultimately saves issues further down the line).

First and foremost, research saves the time and energy spent suggesting something that is unusable, either because it has been done before or is impractical for any reason. Understanding the target audience and their motivation is a given but seeing what others have done in the marketplace, and what has succeeded or failed, can be invaluable.

Research can also serve to inspire and there is no shame in this but look outside just the sector you are working on. Often ideas that have worked for one industry can be modified and reimagined for another…

2. Don’t fall in love with your first idea!

You know the feeling – you’ve cracked it straight away! Job done. Pour yourself a drink.

Nevertheless, even if the first idea is an absolute gem, and potentially is one that ends up being used, continuing the process will help to see how it compares to others.

As with many aspects of life, giving something ‘time to breathe’ offers the opportunity for consideration and reflection. You may go back and tweak the original concept or think up something even more perfect.

3. Don’t discount anything straight away

As with the previous point it is important not to discount anything immediately. Knee-jerk reactions are useful and regularly come from a gut instinct that proves to be correct. So many things affect our judgement at any given time – from emotional state to personal opinion, so keep all the ideas on the table to begin with. The culling of concepts can happen once everything is there to review and you’ve had time to think about them all.

4. Involve the whole team

Some of the best ideas can come from the most unlikely places!

It perhaps isn’t practical to involve everyone in every creative discussion – and certainly later down the line it’s a fact that “too many cooks can spoil the broth” –  the creative spark exists in most people and just needs to be nurtured. 

5. Test your ideas

Once you have the creative down – test it. The sample audience can be small but showing concepts to other people, especially if you’ve become very close to a project, can be the difference between success and failure. We are all human, mistakes will be made but the more eyes that are on something, the less likely this is to happen.

There are no ways of making the creative process completely smooth, and we wouldn’t necessarily want it that way, but following the above points can save time, frustration and potentially red faces too.

If you would like Purple Riot to get creative for your business just get in touch today.