Yesterday, in the middle of a weekly conference call, a client team unexpectedly exploded with a burst of creative ideas. We had been confirming strategy for a social media campaign. Suddenly the dam broke loose and ideas began flooding the room. Everyone had ideas about something new or different to try.
That’s one of the benefits of adding a social media component to traditional marketing campaigns. It opens new dimensions that fire the imagination and stoke the creative engine. This team was on fire.
Sadly, the time for brainstorming had passed. There’s a moment in the creative process when we stop generating new ideas and we begin to develop the idea or ideas that will best help us reach our goal. None of the new suggestions supported the original project objectives. It was up to me to throw some cold water on the fire. I politely suggested that these were great ideas to hold onto for another project at another time because they weren’t going to further our efforts on the current campaign.
It all reminded of the social media study GetSynchronicity recently co-authored with Exhibitor Magazine. In it, fully 66% of respondents who had used social media in a marketing program indicated that they had not set measurable objectives for their campaign. At the risk of sounding like a killjoy, that’s ignoring rule #1 in Marketing 101.
Fortunately, the client lead saw it the same way. We decided to proceed with the original concept. The one based on solid business strategy tied to measurable objectives.