Redstone's Method Creative™ – Making Sparks Fly

To do great creative, you have to be out of your mind.

What do we mean by that? Konstantin Stanislavsky would understand. Mr. Stanislavsky pioneered the style of performance known as “method acting” in the 1920s. He brought his theories to the Actors’ Studio in New York and was a major influence on the styles of luminaries like Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman.

Stanislavsky’s “method” called for actors to get out of themselves and into the mind of the character they were to play – in essence to “become” that character. The performance could then transcend interpretation and “become” a reality to which the audience could easily relate.

Stanislavsky would have made a great ad guy.

Aside from the fact that he was obviously terrific at selling the big idea, he also was on to one of the great secrets of producing great creative: you have to get out of your mind and become your audience.

Let’s face it, we all bring a lot of preconceptions to dealing with familiar situations. So when a product or service becomes familiar, when we understand the “back-end” processes and the “front-end” distribution, when we remember the R & D, the management memos and the five-point business case and when we’ve spent endless months caring deeply about our own beloved widget…we can lose track of the fact that our customers really don’t share our unique perspective.

The fact is, stepping out of the role of a marketer and into the mind of the consumer is one of the most valuable services a good creative team can provide. At Redstone, we affectionately call our approach Method Creative and we use it to do something that our clients just can’t duplicate with internal resources: namely, we take an unbiased outsider’s view of the communication.

There are two parts to doing successful Method Creative. The first is understanding the audience, the second is understanding the product being sold. Sound easy? It’s more complicated than it may initially appear.

The first step of understanding the audience goes deeper than a simple knowledge of standard demographic data. To build communications materials that change hearts, change minds and change behavior, you have to get beyond the statistics and into the humanity.

What situation do your targets find themselves in? What causes them pain? What makes them happy? At Redstone, our creative team builds every piece of communication around these very basic, very human questions. We understand that to make a difference, we have to relate to our audience on their terms, not on the terms that are easiest for us or the most expedient for our clients.

It’s a combination of science and art. We’re familiar with the 26 basic human wants and five basic human motivators that have been articulated by researchers. We combine them with equal parts empathy and encouragement to produce a voice that resonates with and motivates our audience.

Step two in Method Creative calls for understanding the product or service we’re selling. This is about more than features and benefits, it’s about how a product or service relates to an individual’s lifestyle. About the fundamental changes it makes in the way they go about their day. Too often, as marketers, we’re tempted to advertise and communicate from an idealized perspective, how we want our customers to relate to our product rather than how they actually do. The result is often a disconnect with the audience, a sense from them that we “just don’t get it.” The audience’s reaction is, at best, ignoring the message and, at worst, an active disdain for the marketer.

By purposefully engaging in Method Creative, we avoid the dangers of a
disconnect. The messages we create are effective because we’ve put ourselves in the shoes of your audience. We’ve engineered the messages to appeal specifically to that unique perspective.

And for clients, that’s the beauty of the Redstone approach. If we love you, it’s a safe bet we’ll be able to get your audience to love you, too. We’ve got the method to make sure of it.