For powerful strategies look beyond the superficial

In the dynamic and increasingly cluttered digital marketing landscape, agencies constantly need to find ways to cut through the noise. Creating the innovative and impactful campaigns that deliver results relies not only on blending creativity and data effectively but also on understanding the target market on a deeper and more meaningful level. 

The power to construct strong marketing strategies with messaging that resonates — even with those who are not like us — lies in our capacity to understand the diverse human motivations that drive consumer behaviour.  

Uncovering the common needs that feed into human motivation and inform any kind of strategy comes from a marketer's ability to learn the language of the unconscious.  

Proficiency in decoding this language shapes a strategist’s perceptions, where perception is everything. It is what allows marketers to see beyond the superficial to create profoundly impactful campaigns that connect brands and their consumers seamlessly. 

In our efforts to understand human understanding, it is important to draw inspiration from places, people and things that don’t seemingly look connected. For example, Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t necessarily interested in how the human body or nature looked on a canvas. He wanted to know why they appeared as they did to the human eye and what we make of these images. 

Da Vinci created connections to his work with artistic techniques like chiaroscuro and sfumato, which used fine shading that produced soft, imperceptible transitions between colours and tones and contrasted prominent shades of light and dark to create the illusion of three-dimensional forms. 

This perception is what took his painting to a new level at a time when the world was changing around him. 

When strategy takes a similar approach and starts to realise that the world isn’t just black or white, strategists are able to uncover powerful insights and create powerful connections. Magic happens in the myriad shades between black and white, and by embracing this beautiful “in-between” space, marketers can start to truly captivate audiences. 

However, this in-between is not a grey area, nor is it about indecisiveness or “either-or” ideas. On the contrary, it’s about deciding to see the beauty of the strategic marketing process. The beautiful in-between is about the bridge between the stuff nobody cares about and the stuff everyone can’t get enough of. It’s about the potential in between the start and finish. 

And it is this “beautiful in-between” philosophy that defines the making of an effective strategy, which is built on four pillars that redefine the line in digital marketing: 

In an era when digital marketing is defined by its capacity to bridge creativity and data, strategists and communication practitioners stand at the forefront of industry innovation by straddling reality and ideology and mastering the “magic” in between; respecting what is, while celebrating the potential of what could be, by creating a bridge between those worlds where brands and consumers co-creatively innovate. 

Strategy in the era of now plays a significant role in how a brand seamlessly becomes a purposeful part of society without having to force a narrative or put up a farce. In the digital marketing landscape, the uniqueness of a brand lies in its ability to find its magic and how it uses it to connect their audiences to their products organically. 

Cathleen Makhetha is the head of strategy at CBR Marketing Solutions.

The big take-out: When strategists start to realise that the world isn’t just black or white, they are able to uncover powerful insights and create powerful connections.