The secret weapon for business experts to ensure strategically creative results, this is an indispensable field guide to evaluating creative advertising, branding, and design ideas and solutions, and to working with creatives.
Strategic Creativity is a fundamental resource that enables business professionals to stand out amongst their colleagues and enhance their ability to communicate the creative "why" throughout their organizations, and it covers what every business expert should fully comprehend about the creative process. To effectively grow a business and reach the right audience or move a brand forward, advertising and branding need to be relevant, engaging, and worth people’s time. This book contains what a CEO, CMO, manager, business owner, or client didn’t learn about the creative side of advertising and design in business school.
Featuring insightful conversations with creative experts, this book will earn a place on the desks of executives, leaders, managers, and middle managers across industries, whose work requires them to understand and execute on branding initiatives, advertising campaigns, social media, and other customer-facing content.
Table of Contents:
1.Why Strategic Creativity, 2. Thinking Creatively, 3. Strategically Creative Ideas, 4. Strategically Creative Copywriting, 5. Strategically Creative Design, 6. Branding & Art Direction, 7. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Purpose-led Marketing, 8. Building a Culture for Results
About the Author :
Robin Landa is an expert in creative advertising, branding, graphic design, and social media, and has been called a "creativity guru," having published over 20 widely recognized books in her fields of expertise. Robin holds the title of Distinguished Professor of the Michael Graves College, Kean University, USA. She has won numerous awards for her design, writing, and research, and the Carnegie Foundation lists her among the greatest teachers of our time. Robin is a former chair of Design Incubation and serves as a creative consultant to the C-suites of international corporations. You can find out more about her work online at Robinlanda.com
Review :
"Few mysteries confound business leaders more than how creative professionals work their magic. In Strategic Creativity, Robin Landa pulls back the veil to reveal the hidden logic of great marketing communications, from copywriting to graphic design to brand design. Armed with the insights in this book, business leaders will have a vastly easier time interfacing with creative professionals to produce game-changing marketing communications. Filled with compelling insights, checklists, and real-world business cases, Strategic Creativity drills into the details yet never loses sight of the big strategic picture: to build brands with purpose and humanity."
—Neal Roese, Professor and Chair of the Marketing Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
"Robin Landa has written a fascinating new book on Strategic Creativity. The book hands executives the keys to harnessing the best out of creative professionals while also learning how to generate ideas and be more creative yourself. This guided tour of strategic creativity should be on the desk of anyone hoping to build a strong brand, fine tune your advertising, and avoid costly mistakes."
Paul A. Argenti, Professor of Corporate Communication, The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
"Professor Landa has written a remarkable and valuable book, simultaneously enlightening and pragmatic. Business professionals are the customers of advertising, but rarely understand or contribute to what they are ‘buying’. This book enables a business professional to rise above their peers with superior creative outcomes as well as enhances their ability to communicate the ‘why’ throughout their organization. Landa provides a compelling rationale and checklists in a stepwise manner and illustrates them with clear examples. If only I had read this at the start of my career!"
Donald Fishbein, Senior Biotech and Pharmaceutical Executive
"Again and again, Robin Landa has brought forth her inexhaustible well of creativity to help us see and deal with the world in new and imaginative ways. Now with her latest work, Strategic Creativity, she shows us how to use our own imaginative understanding in a detailed way that guides us to achieving our overall aims and intentions in a variety of environments. This highly original volume provides a practical handbook to harnessing the creative potential within us all."
Professor Craig P. Donovan, Kean University Senate Chair
"Robin Landa has done it again! This is a must-read for anyone in the marketing or advertising industry who wants to be the one businessperson in the room who speaks knowledgeably about creative directions and solutions. This explains the importance of strategic creativity better than I ever could."
Brooke Roderick, Senior Art Director, VCCP
"Marketers, strategists, and business-owners alike will benefit from reading Robin Landa's book Strategic Creativity. This book is filled with important and easily-digestible advice that you won't find anywhere on 'Dr. Internet.' It's apparent that a significant amount of research has gone into this book, and as a marketing strategist and business owner myself, I plan to revisit Strategic Creativity again and again. Robin defines exactly what brands need to do to make consumers stop their scrolling and take notice. As Robin mentions, the riskiest idea is the one people will not notice. If you don't take notice of this book, you are missing out on an incredibly valuable read."
Megan Lynn Levy, Entrepreneur and Marketer
"Strategic Creativity is one of those books that no matter where you open it, you’ll find creative insights that you can use in your everyday. I found myself making notes throughout the entire read. Robin’s writing and way of storytelling are engaging and easy to follow. It all just makes sense and will have you asking yourself, as well as others, all the right questions. It’s an ace in your back pocket when dealing with creative teams. Strategic Creativity will have you zeroing in on the 'WHY' and should be in every execs toolbox."
Mike Sickinger, Creative Marketing
"Robin Landa’s new book distills the complexity out of modern marketing decision-making. You’ll be more strategic, more creative, and more effective after reading this great playbook."
Drew Neisser, Founder, Renegade & CMO Huddles and Author of Renegade Marketing: 12 Steps to Building Unbeatable B2B Brands
"Strategic Creativity is essential for any brand, particularly creating a compelling story about a brand, product, or service that stands out from the noise and sticks with the intended audience. When done well, buyers feel a connection to the brand and the message resonates. This book provides a solid framework to help organizations think beyond the status quo, which is a trap many brands fall into today. Landa packs a lot of valuable information into every chapter."
Lauri A. Harrison, Lecturer, Business Certificate Program, Columbia University, School of Professional Studies
"Exceptionally well written, organized and presented…the ideal DIY 'hands on' combination of instructional guide and 'how to' manual that will have a very special appeal to anyone engaging in branding/logo design, advertising, graphic design, and general business marketing…a complete course on corporate creativity in advertising…especially and unreservedly recommended for community, corporate, college, and university library contemporary business management collections and supplemental curriculum MBA studies lists."
Wisconsin Bookwatch
"…the key to creating ad and design concepts and campaigns that work…Landa focuses on realizing, embracing, and cultivating the uniqueness of each business endeavor. Chapters in Strategic Creativity are steeped in marketing, design, and communication processes designed to promote and support not just the special selling points of a business operation, but how to creatively and compellingly represent them…The result synthesizes real-world experiences and examples with admonitions on how to integrate creative problem-solving with strategic positioning methods that embrace and represent a brand's uniqueness. Business managers, entrepreneurs in different professions, and anyone who would better understand the link between business success and creative strategic positioning must add Strategic Creativity: A Business Field Guide to Advertising, Branding, and Design to their reading lists. Libraries will find it a key addition, but ideally Strategic Creativity's message will gain wider attention in classrooms and reading groups, where budding entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals alike can absorb the book's specific, important focus."
D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
"This book packs a fast-paced set of best practices, checklists, and examples of outstanding marketing and advertising campaigns into a convenient handbook…strong on fundamentals and adds an important chapter on infusing creative strategy with a regard for diversity, equity, inclusion, and purpose-led marketing…Landa’s expertise and comprehensive approach to creative strategy make her field guide an important addition to a marketer’s collection. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Undergraduates, two-year technical program students, practitioners, and general readers."
CHOICE, January 2023
