Today's marketing realities are created by visionaries, researchers, planners, writers, artists and critical thinkers who live in the realm of concept and communicate on the edge of discovery.

The anthology of marketing is filled with campaigns best known not as much for their strategic insights, media weightings, or run times as for their message executions. Their "creative executions."

Great creative is frequently attributed to insight, vision, talent, courage, genius, and other mystical qualities because these are the realms where new realities are first suspected, seen, identified, planned, developed, and communicated. Yet, researching markets and buying media are every bit as critical to creating effective campaign messages. Without a tight plan on message delivery, there's no way to create messages with purpose or impact. See How We Buy Media

That said, the creative process is not divined. It certainly is not linear, or segmented by function and specialization as with assembly lines. In fact, the best creative is done in teams, where writers share ideas on art and artists write headlines; where concepts transcend any one media domain or discipline to say noticeably well what can not be said any other way. The process is discursive, highly intuitive, and spontaneous. But, this is a natural consequence of discovery; of discovering good competitive information and product positionings that enable you to sell your ideas better. Vision, insight, talent, courage, and genius are not inexplicable. They are predictable.

At Hunter Finch Ltd. we use competitive information to see, define and diagnose marketing and corporate communications problems. We also use it to define, prescribe, and create strategic solutions to those problems. And, then, we gather information on campaigns-in-progress to validate campaign performance and manage mid-course improvements. Here the "creative process" is all one continuous river of light. Continual information enlightens and brings to the forefront new hypotheses. New hypothesis lead to new syntheses. This makes it possible for marketers to plan, create, test, and validate new campaign strategies before they commit; to adjust campaigns in progress; to invest in and manage only those campaigns that are proven to work.

Albert Schweitzer once said, "Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." Advertising sets the example. Nobody understands concepts, but everybody understands advertising. This the case, perception is itself the reality.  And advertising makes perceptions what they are. When a campaign adverts attention and cuts through media clutter to get noticed, understood, and remembered – with messages that strike a responsive cord in the market(s) it is created for – it is just that: An example. A proof of concept. And, the execution that made the perception what it is – not the concept – is  everything.

Creativity is inherent in everything we do. The epiphanies that accompany discovery and validation of fresh, relevant, strategic working solutions here are not only the foundation for execution, they become moments of truth that, in turn, validate us through execution. When we commit to a campaign, we know it isn't a product of some mystical experience created out of nothing in some vacuum. It is, however, a labor of love built upon good information from the ground up by a dedicated team of researchers, planners, writers, artists, producers, and managers who live in the light on the edge of discovery.