Yes, Creative IS the Strategy

A few months ago Karen (my partner in crime) found this video from the Dollar Shave Club. We thought that the video promoting the service was just hysterical, and in fact, it went viral in just a few days. I even joined the club for a while and it was fun getting the razor and blades in the mail every month, rather than have to go to the drugstore and bother with it.

My point here is that they didn’t bother with a long, drawn out strategy. They discovered their market, decided how best to address it, then designed creative to speak attract it. And it worked like a charm. They are being fantastically successful now and Mike, the CEO, is even being asked to speak at AdAge conventions and being interviewed by the magazine (here).

Brilliant creative integrates with, interacts with, and drives brilliant strategy. This is another example of how creative and strategy are becoming more tightly integrated than ever. Further, this entire campaign worked because of their Big Idea, Making Shaving Convenient and Cheaper. While The Big Idea lost favor with marketers for while, it’s back in a big way because it gives consistency to campaigns that are driven across multiple media, which is the norm today.

As a Bay Area branding company, we firmly believe in this and how we express it is “creative IS the strategy.” It’s how we get campaigns out quickly with strategies that are flexible and adaptive, so that they produce great results.