In recent weeks, a flurry of ad industry blogs and other related content have blamed digital advertising for “stunting creativity.” We’re here to call them out.
Steven Ruddy is the Creative Director at Seychelle Media, where we eat, sleep, and breathe digital advertising. But if you ask Steven to describe the company, he’ll quickly make a distinction, “We are not a digital agency that is only about brand awareness. We’re Lead Generators.
“We specialize in generating high-quality leads that CONVERT for our clients.”
Steven Ruddy Is Not Wrong
Understandably, Steven won’t give away Seychelle Media’s proprietary strategies, but he will share a few significant insights. “Lots of agencies,” says Steven, “mostly developed by design types, proclaim they are full-service. In reality, they started in print or even web building and realized they had to add on digital advertising, without ever really coming to understand that you can’t apply traditional marketing practices to digital engagement and conversion.
“If I could sum up our secret sauce in one word, it would be Creative. It’s about generating a lead as opposed to promoting a brand.
“At Seychelle Media, we honor brands, but we know what works best to get individuals to stop and look. And we know how to make sure our client accounts are attracting the attention of prospects who have the viable potential to become our clients’ customers. In other words, we employ Big Data analytics, and then we target only people who will be interested in our client’s product or services.”
Steven cites four components for digital advertising success. Contrary to the mythology spouted by design and marketing firms that claim digital advertising is thwarting originality, Steven hinges every aspect of client success on agency creativity.
4 Must-Haves for Successful Digital Advertising
- Creative Concepting: to conceptualize an optimal strategy for connecting with and converting the target market identified through insightful 3rd party data analysis
- Creative Copy: eyeball-grabbing language that resonates with the identified prospects
- Creative Design: “thumb-stopping” design that makes a fast-scrolling target, stop and pay attention to the message
- A Creative Social Team: the insight to know when and where your client’s message needs to be
We Thrive on Digital Marketing Challenges
While others are complaining about the limitations of digital platforms and how it hinders their creative efforts, the team at Seychelle Media is thriving on the challenge. We are eating digital advertising strategies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Digital advertising best practices change blindingly fast. We can’t rest on yesterday’s success—even if it was amazing. We have to learn, test, compare, strategize, get up early and stay up late to ensure that we are not just on top of the game, but ahead of it. And as Steven observed, “Every single person on our team has to be united in their focus on achieving the client’s end goal.”
In so many ways, we are engineers on the high-speed train of digital advertising, and there’s no time for whining here on the train.
