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Innovation Must Have a Point

By: Dwayne W. Waite Jr.

As your organization travels through these challenging economic times, no doubt your management and executive teams, business partners, and decision-makers have been gathering to figure out how to get out of this mess positively. Naturally, we all gravitate to innovation. We must be innovative in order to rise out of this downturn! But is it really innovation that your team is looking for?

What is the point of innovation? Innovation happens when something is done, thought of, or created differently. Anything can be innovative; an idea, a product, and in this blogger's realm (and yours I hope), advertising campaigns. As we all harp about needing something new and fresh, perhaps we are overlooking an important step. Why should we innovate?

A leader in the Greater Charlotte YMCA's Servant Leadership Academy said "organizations that innovate must have a point for innovating. Yes, you can innovate, and be wacky and exciting, but if the innovation doesn't fit, you're not being efficient."

Let's apply this to advertising and our creative activities. Yes, we want to bring the best and freshest ideas to the table so our clients love us. So with social and mobile media and referral programs being the hottest things out there right now, we decide to simply throw campaigns on there, because it's "innovative" and the "next-best thing." Yet when the brand/client/business owner asks you how that innovative campaign element fits into the whole mix, what do you say? Hopefully, something good enough that saves your account.

Yes, we got all swept up too about why there's such a lack of innovation and creativity in advertising, but perhaps there needs to be a shift in how brands are willing to communicate with their consumers. As we yell about shooting the messenger, we were blaming the lack of creativity and so on our own people. Innovation needs to wait until the overreaching philosophy of presenting a brand to the consumer changes.

What's the point? Let us not rush into social media, mobile, and all the latest things out there until we develop coherent campaigns around them. Once we know why we need to innovate, and we build a culture where innovation will be supported and cultivated, then we can hope for the next big and exciting shift in advertising. But we are not there yet.

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About the Author

Dwayne W. Waite Jr. is partner and principal at JDW: The Charlotte Agency, a marketing and advertising shop in Charlotte, NC. He enjoys consumer behavior, economics, and football.

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