On the evening of Halloween, we visited Team One, and met all of the great people and creative minds working there. We were met by Chris Graves, the Chief Creative Officer of Team One, who spoke with us a lot about what it means to be innovative, and shared with us a lot of what he finds in creativity to be so helpful and effective.
Mr. Graves began speaking with us about who we are as marketers, and how we should be looking at ourselves in terms of someone looking into a career. "We are not ad-makers, we are creative problem solvers", Graves said. He talked with us a lot about what they do at Team One, how they work with clients, what they offer, and how they look at every single job. As the Chief Creative Officer, he had a lot of insight on the idea that different clients and different jobs need different forms of engagement, and different minds working on everything. One thing I got from Team One already: versatility. Team One launches only the remarkable. With 16 different forms of engagement ready to go in their toolbox, they are able to spread their client's ideas and messages to the world in any way, shape or form.
We later talked about trying to move people with remarkable ideas. Yes, that's really what marketing is, or should at least always strive to be, but Team One focuses on shifting mindsets, create movements, and driving change. One thing I learned from Mr. Graves is that getting someone to stop and look and notice an advertisement, and maybe even go and act on that and buy or do something, is one thing. But doing something that changes the way people think, see things, or act, is completely different. THAT is disruptive; and exactly what Team One strives to do.
My class and I also went through many different videos of projects that Team One and other clever marketers had done in the past few years, looking through different ways to engage people, focusing on what stands out, what just turns heads, and what has a real impact. Awareness leads to action. We talked about rational thinking leading to conclusions, but emotional thinking leading to actions, and actions are what we want to see as results at the end of the day. My main take-away from Mr. Graves and the Team One team: If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative." Creativity lies at the heart of any good idea, because it hasn't been done before, and is clever enough to get people to turn their heads. Once you get their attention, disrupt.
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