with Maximilian Schöngen
Managing Partner
We sat down with Global Creative Lead Maximilian Florian Schöngen to learn more about Creative Media and how it‘s used in the modern age.
As its name suggests, Creative Media is the innovative use of media in all its forms, opportunities, channels, and touchpoints. It is about figuring out how we can craft media to create an impact as a brand on society while staying relevant to modern conversations. If a brand wants to be effective and impactful, the answer lies in creative media. A message only works if you can put it in front of your target audience. Creative Media is the vessel to do that.
“I believe, as shared with my entire team, that Creative Media is the most effective way to get your message across in the biggest and loudest way. It’s not about simple communication. It’s about doing something unexpected and surprising that inspires the masses. In an ocean of similarity, it always pays to make yourself stand out and be relevant to today. When you stand out, people remember you.”
Knowing the benefits of Creative Media is all well and good, but how do we create and implement it effectively in our day-to-day operations? It’s all about repurposing existing touchpoints and finding new ways to do things—technology-driven innovation. The best Creative Media comes from doing something that hasn’t been done before or putting unique twists on tried-and-tested techniques. Fundamentally, you should try to surprise even yourself. Creativity comes from the excitement of the unknown.
Think of it as a challenge you've come up against time and time again. After facing the same challenge multiple times, you learn how to solve the problem. And before long, finding the solution becomes second nature. Because you have so much experience, highlighting the problem and finding the solution is like muscle memory. The same thing happens when reaching your target audience in the media industry. If you‘ve used the same techniques to reach the same audience for a long time, you'll get used to doing the same thing over and over again. To be truly innovative, it sometimes helps to pretend you have no idea what you’re doing.
Sounds strange, right? Well, think about it. If you approach every problem as if you‘ve never seen it before, you force yourself to find fresh, new ways of solving it. Rather than doing the same thing, you force yourself to innovate and change things. The best way to reach a new and exciting finish line is to set out on a completely different path.
“At Mediaplus, we bring together creative minds from all over the world to form one Creative Collective. Media planners, strategists, designers—all kinds of expert media minds gathered together in pursuit of one goal: to innovate. Mediaplus brings people with different skill sets from different walks of life together to ensure we approach each problem from as many angles as possible. Our interpretation is this: we truly believe that when different cultures, people, talents, and disciplines all come together to collaborate, innovative ideas are born."
Creativity and inspiration often go hand-in-hand. You can’t have one without the other, making inspiration important in Creative Media. In the business world, there‘s always been a hierarchy of how things are done. In a successful media organization, each person has a role to inspire those who work directly below them. This creates a consistent chain of inspiration from top to bottom, which, in turn, breeds creativity and creates a culture of creative freedom.
Great work comes from excitement, passion, and communication, especially in the creative industries. Once you create an environment where this is not only allowed but encouraged, you begin to see the best innovation. Our thoughts and self-doubts are often the barriers to innovation, but once you make people feel safe and confident enough to share their ideas, you start a creative chain reaction. You know what they always say — there's no such thing as a bad idea. Even if an idea doesn’t lead directly to a new product or service, it may spark a conversation that does.
Creative Media also relies on a healthy dose of trust within your team. You have to trust your employees and colleagues to carry out their jobs to a high standard. As soon as you make people follow your rigid process, you run the risk of stifling their creative talent. Everyone approaches creative tasks differently, and those variations often create unique innovations. By trusting others, you build a fertile farmland where innovative ideas grow.
The lines between creativity and media are already blurry, but we expect them to disappear at some point soon. The future of communication will undoubtedly revolve around data-media touchpoints and creativity. This is where the media industry is heading—the holy grail of communication. We need to strive to find the best possible target audience. In doing that, we must put out the most creative, impactful strategy. It’s all about setting out your touchpoints and taking your customers on a journey from their first introduction to your brand all the way to becoming valued customers/consumers. The future of Creative Media is bright.
At the moment, Creative Media works far better on a branding level than performance sales, but this is just the beginning of the journey. Once your branding transforms with Creative Media, there's no reason it can't boost sales in the future. You can’t sell to your target audience until you find them. However, it'd be a mistake to assume that Creative Media will completely take over the media landscape. It should always be an additional tool alongside traditional media planning; they are not mutually exclusive. Creative Media is where you build peaks of impact, meaning using a particularly impactful Creative Media idea alongside your standard media strategy to create sharp peaks in relevance. In this current landscape, Creative Media thrives.
The best way to move forward and push creativity in media is to build strong reference cases that work well to convince clients, colleagues, and partners to invest in Creative Media. Once you have a pile of proof that showcases all the benefits, it becomes impossible to ignore. Creative Media isn't about creating fun ideas for the sake of it. It’s about crafting impact and effectiveness for consumer branding. Like anything in life, you have to get a few success stories under your belt before people start to trust you.
“One piece of advice that has always stuck with me is "craft the crap out of everything." Between 2008 and 2011, I played rugby for the German national team. My coach at the time, Daniel Stocks, always used to tell us, "Don’t leave anything on the pitch." Why bother competing if you aren't willing to give your all in the pursuit of victory? The same thing can be said for Creative Media. Don’t leave any ideas in your head. Get them out there and see how far they can go. Then craft the crap out of them!”
