TRENDSETTERS: Creative Reality's Paul Price offers a new vision of 21st century marketing
Given his long history in ad agency management with a mandate to find solutions for global CMOs, Paul Price clearly understands today's marketing issues. "The biggest challenge now facing marketers is growth." Yet he also admits, "Growth is a subject that may sound simple, but the right solutions in these times are far from easy."
If the CMO's essential dilemma is thinking through how to grow, then Paul Price sees today's brand demands best characterized by a leaky bucket. "You must keep current customers loyal while using all variety of innovation to develop new ones. Satisfying growth also means entering new markets -- whether actual geographic markets or finding new distribution channels to the new opportunities in the digital landscape. All options, though, are a response to a core consideration: 'How can I create brand value in a challenging economy?' "
According to Price, the best way to increase chances for brand success in the 21st century is to replace the marketing plan with an experience plan.
He believes this so completely that five months ago, he took on the CEO role at Creative Realities, an agency that invents brand experiences to inspire emotional connections with communities -- at home, in life, on-line and in-store.
"Brands," he says, "are perceptions formed by consumers as a result of their experiences of them. In the digital age, more perceptions are formed outside of a marketer's ability to influence them. In fact, the consumer is now more influential as a co-creator of the brand. We see this all the time through brand advocates and antagonists in a social media world."
Already, Paul and his Creative Realities teams are working with a major private hospital to create the experience of their brands across their patients' journeys and via the experience of the broader community of caregivers. He's also enabling a major packaged goods marketer to re-imagine the benefits of their brand through the lens of experience to better connect human emotion and brand relationships.
He believes that "Emotions are the most powerful currency in business. Inspiring emotions requires a holistic, non-linear approach. Creative Realities is channel and platform agnostic, fluent in all, burdened by none,"
When asked about the attraction of the agency to an expanding client base, Paul says, "Creative Realities is an alternative for marketers seeking an alternative. One group of clients knows what they don't know; they go to key shops. However, there is a growing group that doesn't know what they don't know. They are often the willing enthusiasts who look at alternative ways of thinking."
