Learn about your customers and drive creative marketing with keyword creativity by Neil Davidson, 17 November 2008

David Ogilvy was one of the advertising greats. Ogilvy believed that part of the process of developing great creative ideas was immersion in information about a product and its consumers. He even described himself as ‘helpless without research material.’

Ogilvy’s approach is still relevant, and immersion is so much easier than it was with specialized research companies, new research approaches and the limitless information available on the internet. However, truly great creative ideas are still rare and it’s tougher now to get standout, due to viewer wear-out and the multiplicity of media channels.

New ways of thinking and working are emerging that maximize the potential of new data sources and increase the chances of coming up with those vital big ideas. One of these is keyword creativity. It brings together digital consumer insights and new creative techniques and can be applied to almost any marketing and creative challenge.

Keywords as a new way to understand consumers

There have been vast changes in the amount of research information available and how quickly it can be accessed. However, there is a big difference between information and insight, and it’s easy to get swamped in information which is insight free, and one of the key principles behind keyword creativity is to make unearthing real insights easier.

The keyword data collected when consumers use search engines is still a relatively untapped source of insight. Until recently keyword data was mainly used in SEO, but now it’s being used to spark creative solutions. Keyword data has a lot going for it:

• Consumer insights from keyword data can now be applied to all channels, because digital behavior is ingrained to the point that digital has affected how consumers make purchase decisions and respond to marketing messages.
• Keyword data results can open up completely unexpected avenues of thinking, because it’s based on actual consumer behavior rather than our own assumptions. One of the big drawbacks of conventional research is that it is affected by preconceived notions of what should be researched, closing down the chances of insights that challenge conventional thinking.
• Keyword data suffers none of the downsides of conventional research, particularly any research effect, because all of the search behavior that it is based on is natural.
• Keyword data results can be manipulated and investigated further, to meet your needs.
• The results can be constantly updated, without continually commissioning new rounds of research.

As a result of this, keyword data is being used at the start of the creative process. For some examples of its uses see Wordtracker’s Keyword Research Guide.

Keywords as the stimulus behind new creative processes

David Ogilvy would find few surprises in the processes used for developing ideas today, apart from the emergence of account planners and the use of brainstorming sessions. It’s still very much a process of passing the baton from client to agency account team and then on to creatives. It still works, but it’s time-consuming, expensive and has no guarantee of ending with a great idea. The thinking behind keyword creativity is that we don’t just need new insight sources for ideas but that there’s also an opportunity to change the process for creating ideas.

Creativity experts such as Michael Michalko and Tony Buzan have developed techniques for increasing creativity. Many of these techniques use content generated by the participants, which can limit and skew the results. The dream creative technique would be consumer-driven and creatively disruptive, and keyword data can bring the two together.

Here are two examples of how it can work:

• Using keyword data to create the starting point for different tree structures within Mind Maps.
• Keywords as the stimulus for brainstorming, either using keywords related or unrelated to the issue, depending on how far you want to push new ideas and ways of looking at a problem.

Keyword data can transform many other established creative techniques, to make novel connections where it seems least likely, and taking an unusual viewpoint to uncover ideas that could never been predicted at the start of the process. Better still, the consumer plays a part in the process, right at the start, where they should always be. I am sure David Ogilvy would approve.

For more articles on how to use keywords creatively, go to our Keyword Creativity page.