” Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination and creativity will take you everywhere.”Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
The most important leadership muscle in business, inside any department, any work group, across the entire enterprise and through the market you serve is the ability to service imagination. We do not sell nor market the cold steel or plastic of anything. We sell and market the dream to better enjoy your home, mobile and or business life. We sell and service imagination through our product and brand disciplines… through each and every content touch point from cosmetics to design to packaging to support and service. In essence, servicing imagination is truly job one.
The word imagination should be better defined for our thinking and planning, for our market success. Let’s mathmatically define imagination as follows: Imagination = Creativity + Relevancy. When imagination congeners creativity and relevancy as one it is nearly impossible to resist the emotional temptation to lean in, to take action, to make the purchase. If imagination fed is highly creative and not relevant the sale will be lost. And if the imagination served is highly relevant but not creative the sale again is lost. In essence, Creativity + Relevancy = WON.
Music itself may be the most urbane example of servicing imagination through creativity and relevancy. For those of you who are musicians and or music lovers you know your passion for creativity and the importance of the right relevant genre to stimulate your emotional capital, to energize your pocketbook to vote for a song, a band, a concert an experience. In essence, the song services your imagination, energizes your emotional hunger to stimulate your heart and mind through symphonic inspiration. The song transforms and empowers your senses, magically. The song causes you preference for more of the same, more august stimulation from the artist. Think of the artist as the product, the brand and the content all in WON mammoth inspiration.
The richest experience to best service imagination, to make or take a market metaphorically can be offered through the content delivery of a live orchestra or a band pumping creativity, relevancy, diversity and collaboration throughout the concert hall. Can be realized and serviced by watching and listening to magical orchestral interludes, musical crescendo’s, instrument solos and staccato scales in movements and performance. The dedication, creativity, relevance in momentum, in stimulating eye and ear bites amplifies, services our hungry imagination. Offer made in the language of servicing imagination; sale made, “I’ll be back for more.” Here is my own personal example to practice even on the weekends the power of uniting music, creativity and relevancy to capture ones imagination through the Stars In Your Eyes.
The intellectual sidebar of what is creativity and how do we express it in all we do, say and offer to the market is lost to the power of a competitive, imaginative-spirit of relevant market offerings. Highly successful leaders do not attempt to manage creativity. Instead, they manage for creativity. This small nuance is the core of success for a multitude of market leaders in varying markets. In essence, all employees should and must contribute to this imagination formula. Must learn to formulate, create and exercise both creativity and relevancy for stark competitive advantage. Encourage and enable creativity to encourage and enable consumers to purchase your products, your brand, your imagination: built to last, built to boomerang opportunity.
Highly creative and relevant music from a musicians perspective, from a producers expected profit is the construct that magnets opportunity: that makes or takes a markets imagination and turns it into profitable engagements. Brands and products must kinetically product-sing and brand-entertain their intended audiences inside a very crowded and loud social and retail market place. Perfection of operational process cannot and should not outweigh, outperform creative relevancy to drive competitive imagination for your offering.
Corporations, indeed leaders mostly believe few people have equal or valued capabilities in creative and relevant ideation, generation and commercialization. Market leaders however emphasize an encouraging culture of creativity to best thrive, to best ride the wave of opportunity; nurturing creative seeds into relevant and profitable market opportunities. Encourage your musicians, your managers, your department heads, your leaders across sales, marketing, operations, product development… across every working group to increase creativity, to lead with relevant creativity to lead market opportunities. After all, if you want to be the leader in any market you and your team must act like a market leader through refulgent creativity and relevancy to capture the imagination of consumers.
As Albert Einstein said best: “imagination allows you to escape the predictable.” The predictable in this case is the failure to make or take a market. Even though your products and or brand are more relevant than your competition, if you forgot to be highly creative, more apt to capture consumers imaginations, then their ready-to-buy pocketbooks will not be yours. Servicing imagination, promulgating and delivering on the art of the possible through bi-modal creativity and relevancy is always and forever job “WON!”
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