Creative is sometimes the first thing that catches a user’s eye. Visuals are meant to capture our audience’s attention and draw them in, encouraging them to learn more about the business and services we offer. And there’s more that goes into creative than just images. Molly Hawkins, founder of We Are Unicorns, joins us to talk about what makes for great creative, and what to do with a limited budget, and how AI can help support creative efforts.
Learn more about We Are Unicorns at weareunicorns.co.
Learn more about Fujisan Marketing here or email your questions/comments to contact@fujisanmarketing.com.
Full episode transcript:
Preston Parshall 00:15
Welcome to The Digital Marketers Guide podcast where we break down digital marketing topics into bite sized episodes that can help make your marketing program and you a little better. I’m Preston Parshall, the founder and CEO Fujisan Marketing. We’re here today, with Molly Hawkins, the founder of We Are Unicorns to discuss creatives role in digital marketing. Welcome, Molly.
Molly Hawkins 00:35
Hi, Preston. Thanks for having me.
Preston Parshall 00:38
Of course. So how important is creative in your digital strategies? Well,
Molly Hawkins 00:42
it’s really, really important because it’s the thing that people can see, touch hear. But you know, for me, it’s truly secondary to you know, the systems and kind of having a playbook and a plan for that creative
Preston Parshall 00:57
Somali, tell me a little bit kind of about you, your agency and your background in marketing. Wow,
Molly Hawkins 01:03
that’s a can of worms. I’ll start with a little background on me, I started wearing unicorns 13 years ago, after having worked in marketing for, you know, maybe a decade plus, prior to that at a brand, were at different brands. So having gotten to receive the work and collaborating with agencies. From that perspective, you know, I saw a gap saw an opportunity to create an agency that put social and creative first, you know, and then over the years, I really started kind of finding a niche in the outdoor and active lifestyle space.
Preston Parshall 01:35
And you’re amazing at it, what would you say makes great creative? Well,
Molly Hawkins 01:40
that is also a can of worms, you know, great creative is relative, but I do think good creative is led by a good strategy, and having a good operational kind of tool set and a team to bring it to life to channel. You know, creative, all depends. And the creative that comes to life depends on the I think where you’re going to be putting it. So I think identifying, you know, brand, who you are, first and foremost, and really understanding how to translate that to say, if we’re talking about, you know, across all of your marketing, how do you translate a brand message, and brand voice and tone and that aesthetic, from your website homepage to an email newsletter to Instagram, Instagram Stories versus, you know, an Instagram real or feed post? Then, you know, how does that look on tick tock? So, you know, I think understanding dissecting your brand, translating who that what that is, first and foremost, developing a playbook. And then you know, breaking down briefs and creative, you know, deliverables is, you know, tertiary to all of that really kind of fundamental work. So
Preston Parshall 02:58
tell me a little bit more about that playbook and kind of mapping it out. And what does that process look like for you?
Molly Hawkins 03:03
Well, for me, and my clients, it’s usually a 90 day process. So get ready strap strap in, it’s, it takes time, you know, if you really want to answer those questions, and build a toolkit that takes you maybe as the founder or as the you know, marketing manager out of all of the operative, you know, work, you create a playbook you take the time to detail out, you know, okay, if your brand mission is to do X, Y, and Z, you know, how does that then look that how do you execute against that on each your channels? And then how do you then create a calendar that allows you to support you know, the roadmapping, so you can have enough lead time to, you know, deliver on x y&z? Sure.
Preston Parshall 03:46
And, you know, when we’re talking about creative, we aren’t just talking about images are we know,
Molly Hawkins 03:51
we’re talking about copywriting? We’re talking about, you know, images, of course, graphic design. You know, we’re talking about the whole kitten caboodle.
Preston Parshall 04:04
So the question we always hear, what do you recommend with a limited budget for creative so, all the time, just from our perspective, clients come from come to us, and the last thing they’re thinking about is creative. And the last thing a lot of times they want to pay for, especially because we’re mostly a media company, you know, is creative. So, what would you recommend to those clients or to those, you know, people that are doing the media, for people with limited budgets,
Molly Hawkins 04:32
holy moly, you’re throwing some curveballs at me, because you know, limited budget can mean so many things, you know, limited budget can mean something very different for Coca Cola as it can, you know, mean something very, very different for someone starting up a, you know, a T Shirt Company just down the street. So it is again, all relative. So I think again, first identifying what your output needs are, how many products do you have to storytel And how many launches are you Gonna storytel throughout the course of a year, so that could you know, then dictate how many, you know, posts, social posts or emails you need to deliver on. So then you could roadmap back, do backwards math and say, Okay, that’s 20 pieces of creative, and I have X amount of budget, you know, you can divide that do the maths on that. And you could say, okay, what are my content sources? Well, I can shoot photos, but I might need someone to write the, you know, the copy for for me. So, you know, you can go to AI, that is a thing, there’s a lot of resources between AI, you know, Canva, you know, you have lots of freelancers and creatives that are hungry, you know, we live in this economy where, you know, everybody’s kind of got a side hustle. And so, you know, it’s, it’s hard to really give you an answer for that, I’d say, you know, really starting with that playbook, determine what your needs are, and then figure out what you can do on your own. And then figure out, you know, what you can hire somebody for and then what can you automate, you know, because automation is, you know, my last preference, you know, because you want things to be tailored and personal. But sometimes you just can’t do it all. So you need to outsource, sometimes you need to mechanize things and give yourself grace, because that’s, you know, you got to walk before you run, and if that’s what you have, in terms of resources, you know, just give yourself a little bit of grace and, you know, be willing to ask for help, or, you know, compromise a little bit, I’d say,
Preston Parshall 06:34
yeah, so when we’re talking about automation, AI is the hot topic, right. And so, we’ve beat AI, and copywriting or AI, and words to death. But I was just personally wondering about your experience with AI and images. I have some friends that work for other agencies, they’ve shown me some initial things. There’s always a, you can always tell just a little bit, but I was wondering, What’s your perspective on it?
Molly Hawkins 07:02
It’s funny, we don’t use AI for the actual imagery or the creative, but what we’ll use it for is to help ideate shot lists, or to come up with campaign ideas. You know, we also don’t use AI to write our captions or social copy. But we will let it use it to help inspire and expand, you know, on ideas that will take us, you know, to our workshop, it could take like, you know, 10 minutes to pop in some inspo into an AI tool to spit out some ideas. So that’s how I would recommend folks use it, you know, then, you know, you’re going to have much more authentic output if you’re using real content creators, and creators. But I truly like to use and then you don’t displace jobs and work. I mean, that’s this big, bigger conversation. But yeah, I like using AI for inspiration and ideas, cool
Preston Parshall 07:55
ideation. So switching subjects, how should people utilize user generated content, and let’s get give me a little bit about user generated both visual and words.
Molly Hawkins 08:08
Hell yeah, this is something I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that. But this is something that I’m very passionate about, especially for a lot of the brands that we work with, that are outdoor brands, that community is such a huge part of you know, outdoors. And you know, really being able to show that social proof people using the products aspirationally showing those vibes having a good time, it really just sells the brand, by way of that kind of energy that you’re just not able to convey when you’re a brand saying, Yeah, we’re awesome. Look at us, you know. So there’s that kind of brand, you know, lifestyle component that’s very powerful and compelling, as well, algorithmically, when you are using user generated content repurposing, and on your channels on social media, and then you get to tag people, not only do they then repost their your content that you tag them in, again, to their, you know, social media fans, as well, you know, the algorithms and the social channels. Notice when you’re tagging, they see those through lines between the content, their audiences and all that. So there’s a lot of benefit in it. But you know, I get most excited about it, because it’s a lot of social proof. You know, and it does really elevate the people that you’re trying to support and promote, you know, within the space. Cool.
Preston Parshall 09:26
Can you share an example of when creative was particularly successful or something that you’re proud of?
Molly Hawkins 09:33
Oh, geez, I am so proud of so many things, but I’m going to use an example for this company called lodge spelled l o g. They are a outdoor camp motel chain that is rooted in the outdoor lifestyle and most of their locations are in these bedroom communities right outside of major metropolitan cities near outdoor recreation. You And we got to help ideate this whole concept from the name to the identity, the visual identity and kind of express the concept and how you verbalize and articulate what this idea could and would be. There’s so many things that I’m proud about being involved in that project. But it’s, it’s really neat. If you haven’t been to a lodge motel, you should definitely check them out.
Preston Parshall 10:27
Definitely. Well, how do you develop an organic social strategy? Small question.
Molly Hawkins 10:34
You start with a social marketing mission, how I start every single strategy exercises, I asked the partner if they have a brand mission, or a marketing mission. And then from that, I develop a social marketing mission statement that will guide every single thing we do from there on out. So if your mission is to make hats for outdoor users, okay, our content or social marketing mission might be okay, all of our content and our storytelling should help give people reasons to put on a hat maybe. So that is where we start. It seems so silly and so dumb, but it then becomes this thing that we can ask every time we’re sourcing an ambassador or looking at content writing copy, we can ask ourselves, does this thing that we’re doing, actually serve that mission? Yes or no?
Preston Parshall 11:28
Yeah. That’s amazing. So thank you, Molly, you’ve given us so much to think about, and you’re amazing at what you do. Thanks for listening to the digital marketers guide podcast. Be sure to subscribe to stay up to date when a new episode is released. If you have any feedback or topics you’d like to see covered, email us at contact@fujisanmarketing.com or learn more about us at Fujisanmarketing.com. See you next time.
