The Best Creative Makes People Feel Something

I have spent a large part of my career creating marketing content, from websites and graphic design through to social campaigns, video, PR and events. The formats have changed enormously over that time, but one thing has remained fairly constant: people do not owe brands their attention. Simply publishing something does not give anyone a reason to stop what they are doing and look at it.

That is why I think the strongest creative marketing usually makes somebody feel something. It does not necessarily need to create a profound emotional response. Humour, curiosity, excitement, pride, nostalgia and surprise can all be incredibly powerful. What matters is that there is something in the work beyond information about the organisation itself.

Sport has always fascinated me from this perspective because emotion is already embedded in the product. Supporters have memories attached to clubs, players, grounds, colours, matches and moments. The marketer does not necessarily need to manufacture emotion from nothing. Often the opportunity is to recognise what already matters to people and find a creative way of bringing it to the surface.

The Aberystwyth Town sticker album was a good example. On the most basic level, it was another piece of merchandise. But the concept had much more going for it than simply asking supporters to buy a product. There was nostalgia for traditional football sticker albums, current players for younger supporters to collect, former players and club history for long-term fans, and the slightly unusual story of a domestic Welsh football club producing its own album. That combination helped the idea generate coverage across BBC radio, S4C, Welsh-language media and other outlets.

What interested me about that campaign was that the PR did not need to manufacture a story around an ordinary product. The product itself contained the story. People wanted to talk about it because there was something interesting, unusual and emotionally familiar about the idea.

This is also why I am sceptical whenever I hear that people's attention spans are now only a few seconds long. People will happily watch a two-hour film, listen to a three-hour podcast or spend an evening scrolling through content that interests them. The problem is rarely that people cannot concentrate. The problem is that much marketing has not earned their concentration.

Gary Vaynerchuk has spoken for years about understanding the context of the platform rather than simply distributing the same piece of creative everywhere, and I think there is an important lesson in that. The execution needs to reflect how people behave in the environment where the marketing appears, but the deeper principle is about relevance and interest.

Good creative therefore needs to do more than look attractive. It needs to give somebody a reason to care, even briefly. When marketing achieves that and also connects the feeling back to a recognisable brand, creativity becomes much more than decoration. It becomes a commercial advantage.