I didn’t say that—Steve Jobs did. Actually, let’s go full quote here because it’s too good to paraphrase:

“Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, “A faster horse!”‘ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

Read things not yet on the page.

That’s the job. That’s our superpower. Not churning out algorithm-pleasers or Frankensteining together a campaign based on “what worked last quarter.” If you can point to five other campaigns that look like yours and say, “See? This is why it’ll work”—then it won’t.

Because great advertising doesn’t look like anything else. It’s not recycled. It doesn’t play nice. It punches you in the gut and then hugs you while whispering, “You’ll thank me later.”

So, how did we end up here, elbows deep in dashboards and data vomit?

If we are being honest—a LOT of the ads today feel like they were written by committee and tested into oblivion until the edges were sanded off and the soul was gone. Campaigns that sound like they were optimized for click-throughs, not connection. It’s creative by way of the calculator.

We need to shape culture, not endlessly chase trends. We need to create campaigns that people will remember for years instead of hoping someone sees it before it disappears into the void of Stories and swipes.

And yes, I get it. Data matters. Analytics are useful. But they are not the destination—they’re the map. You use them to understand the terrain, then you blaze a trail no one else has dared to take. You don’t let the GPS drive the damn car.

We’ve got to stop acting like success is only measured in conversion rates. What about impact? What about building a brand so iconic that people tattoo it on their bodies and name their kids after it? (Okay, that might be extreme, but you get my point.)

So, here’s my call to arms: To the dreamers, the weirdos, the slightly unhinged creatives who got into this business to make something new—we need you.

We need your gut instincts, your 3:00 am ideas, your boldness, your insanity. We need to stop treating creativity like a liability and start treating it like the nuclear fuel it is. Let’s put the magic back in advertising. Let’s make stuff that scares the client a little. That makes people talk. That makes other brands go, “Damn, I wish we’d done that.”

Use the data to inform your launchpad, not to water it down into a safe, beige mush that appeals to everyone and resonates with no one. Let’s stop crafting campaigns for approval and start creating them for impact! Not just clicks. Let’s build brands that don’t just live in people’s feeds, but live in their hearts and minds.  Because when you stand for something bigger, people stand with you.  Find your people — and light a fire under them.

Because if we don’t? If we keep sliding down this slope of safety and sameness? Creativity dies. And I, for one, didn’t come into this industry to give the people “a faster horse.” I came to build a rocket! Now let’s light that fuse.

Gigasavvy is an award-winning content creation, brand and creative agency that position clients for long-term success. Connect with us to chat about how we can produce impactful content for your business. 

The old playbook of hard sells, product features, and siloed performance marketing is starting to wear thin. People don’t want to be sold to—they want to be entertained. They crave connection, humor, and authenticity instead of overt marketing pitches. Take a look around. The ads that are really hitting their mark today aren’t just ads—they’re cultural moments, diving headfirst into culture itself. It’s about crafting stories, memes, or campaigns that people want to engage with, not the kind they skip as fast as the “Skip Ad” button will let them. The best advertising doesn’t feel like advertising at all. It feels like entertainment, or maybe a wink from a friend who knows just how ridiculous (and wonderful) the world can be.

The secret sauce here – cultural alignment. Ads that entertain, provoke, or resonate emotionally are the ones that will cut through the relentless barrage of “content”. We’re not living in an era of quiet and subtlety. We’re in the age of big, bold ideas.The kind of ideas that deliver results not by shouting louder, but by connecting deeper. The biggest ideas won’t beg for attention; they’ll demand it by being impossible to ignore. The brands that understand this will thrive. Those that don’t? Well, there’s always room in the bargain bin.

AI is everywhere—it’s become more of a buzzword than a solution. But here’s the reality: AI has leveled the playing field. What once took big agencies months and teams of strategists to uncover, smaller independent agencies can now accomplish in weeks—or even days. This shift puts powerful insights and creative firepower into the hands of the ambitious, nimble, and scrappy.

So, what does this mean for brands? It means that working with a smaller agency no longer means compromising on quality – if anything, it’s an upgrade. These smaller, leaner teams are free from the bureaucratic bloat that weighs down traditional agencies. They’re fast, fearless, and focused—the perfect partners for crafting bold, boundary-pushing campaigns that actually move the needle. Big ideas don’t require big budgets anymore; they require big thinking and the confidence to punch above your weight class. And small, agile agencies have it in spades!

If you’re a brand that has built a strong in-house team but still finds itself stuck in a rut, putting out the same tired creative as everyone else in your category, it’s time to shake things up. You don’t need a sprawling, overpriced agency to do it. You may however need someone to challenge the status quo, take some risks, and help you create the kind of work people can’t stop talking about.

Gigasavvy is an award-winning content creation, brand and creative agency that position clients for long-term success. Connect with us to chat about how we can produce impactful content for your business. 

Creating a brand is one of the most important things an organization will do. A brand is more than a name and a visual system; it’s the foundation for every touchpoint with every audience — from customers to employees and investors. To get it right, smart business leaders bring in the expertise of branding agencies to conduct a thorough audit of the offering, the competitive landscape, and key areas of differentiation.

The product of a brand-building project should be an impactful brand book with stunning visuals and inspirational descriptions of what the brand stands for, what it hopes to achieve, and who it will serve. 

But then what? 

Once a brand is created, how do you measure and manage brand health? Without a concerted, structured effort, it’s easy for brands to go astray, unwittingly falling short of the brand promise or failing to reach their full potential. That’s where brand measurement and brand management come in.

Measuring Brand Health

Understanding how to measure brand health starts by defining it. Your brand health is an assessment of how well you meet your business objectives by delivering on your brand promise. It’s important to take this balanced approach vs looking at cost, growth and revenue targets alone, since those KPIs can not capture the long-term costs of short-term measures.

For example, if your brand sells upscale products, you could simultaneously grow your revenue and customer base while reducing cost per acquisition by marking down all of your products by 50%. But in the long run, this approach would diminish your brand value because you would no longer be able to afford the same level of investment in quality, service and design. You would no longer be delivering on your brand promise.

To evaluate your brand health, you must also track every aspect of your brand presence — your brand awareness, reputation, engagement, consideration and loyalty. Purposefully managing these elements of your brand will help you build brand equity over time, generating big value for your business. In fact, 84% of the value of S&P 500 companies comes from brand equity.

The below reference outlines some ways that each of these elements of your brand can be measured.

Managing Brand Health

To effectively manage your brand health, it is important to track these aspects of your brand presence periodically to see how well your brand is performing compared to your own baseline, as well as your competitors. Looking at these metrics within the framework of these five areas also helps to provide guidance on how to move forward if your brand health is struggling.

For example, if you see that your brand awareness is low, start by evaluating your audience personas and media channels to ensure that you are meeting your target audiences appropriately, and then work to create an impactful brand awareness campaign. To make the most impact, focus on bringing big ideas to life to grab audiences’ attention and make your brand promise shine.

If your brand is meeting all of your goals for impressions and share of voice, but you find that audiences are not engaging with your content, drill in further on your brand campaign with updated messaging that connects on a more emotional level. Your mid-level campaign should provide more information without getting technical, and convey how your brand recognizes and addresses a core human truth.

If all of your paid media is working to bring audiences to your website, and you find that your brand health is suffering at that point, there is work to be done to help increase purchase intent and sales velocity. Start by digging into cart abandonment data to see where consumers are losing interest. Consider engaging with an outside agency to evaluate your user journey, then identify areas of confusion or breakage, and work to enhance your experience and messaging accordingly. 

Your brand reputation and brand loyalty are very closely tied together, so one of these areas rarely suffers without impacting the other. If you find this to be the case, consider introducing elements of surprise and delight into your brand experience — not only for customers, but also for employees. These team members are important ambassadors who bring your brand to life in the market with every customer touchpoint, so it’s important that they live and breathe your core values.

Gigasavvy helps brands improve their brand health by bringing big ideas to life with emotionally impactful creative. Contact us to find out how we can help you connect with your audiences on a deeper level at every stage of the purchase journey.

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Have you ever noticed that so many car commercials look and sound the same? Regardless of the brand, you’re likely to see gleaming paint on winding roads and hear the rush of a vehicle driving by, often with a happy car-owner getting out at their destination to punctuate the experience. Or, have you ever looked at make-up ads side-by-side and noticed how similar they are — featuring fresh-faced beauties with every skin type looking directly into the camera as their hair flies in the breeze? We could go on and on with other category examples.

So, why, when so many marketers recognize the importance of standing out, do so many brands in any given category look the same? And how can your brand avoid falling into the same trap?

The Importance of a Strong, Multi-Faceted Brand Story

Often, the tendency to gravitate to a sea of sameness within a category starts with chasing a trend. In the beauty industry, for example, there is a (welcome) movement toward inclusivity. As brands embrace this moment, they take care to include women of various sizes, skin tones and hair types within their ads to showcase the range of their products and to speak to their brand value of empowering ALL women to embrace their beauty.

Notice that we mention highlighting their brand value without distinction — that common brand value of embracing the beauty of all women. In any given industry it is likely that certain values will be common across many brands. But an important element in building an impactful brand is finding the whitespace, the place where your brand distinctly stands, so you can differentiate and help customers understand what ELSE you’re about — and why they should care — otherwise your brand will begin to look like all the others.

In brand building this is done with a competitive analysis, which results in a brand positioning map. Competitor brands are plotted based on their market positioning to see how closely they are aligned with each other and with audiences. Visualizing brand positioning in this way helps to identify where there is room to be distinctive. When the whitespace aligns to your brand’s mission, vision and values, you can build a brand promise and brand story around it.

But building a strong brand story is only part of the equation. You cannot simply create a brand book and file it away. You must strategically manage your brand to purposefully ladder back to it and consistently tell the entire brand story with each campaign. Without a doubt, each beauty product on the store shelf has a brand story that is about more than the single principle of inclusivity. But in the quest to speak to what is going on in the world at the moment, the rest of the brand story can easily go untold.

The Importance of Knowing Your Audiences

In the beauty industry example above, we highlight beauty ads which try to honor the importance of inclusivity by highlighting the beauty of every type of woman in their ads. Surely, if these brands make products for all women, they should be speaking to all of them and making them all feel equally important. But a woman with sensitive skin, another with oily skin, and others with easily-sunburned or acne-riddled skin will not be buying products for the same reason. They should not be treated the same way in ads which try to speak to all of them at once.

To avoid homogeneous ad campaigns, brands should develop detailed audience personas to understand the real people they are selling to. This should include their pain points and purchase motivations, what they like and dislike, where and how they shop and consume media, and how they prioritize their time and money.

Knowing your audiences in this way allows brands to take a storytelling approach to create meaningful campaigns which resonate more deeply with consumers. When brands create ads which make consumers feel something, they are more likely to stand out and be remembered.

The Advantage of Thinking Outside Your Space

One of the reasons we see so many brands failing to follow these principles is a tendency to gravitate to proven players in their industry when hiring internal team members and creative agencies. It feels logical — if your brand wants to sell more cars or beauty products, you look for a candidate or partner who has a proven track record of doing so. But this approach, especially over time, often leads to siloed thinking and iterative creative that fails to stand out.

Individuals and groups who have been dedicated to a single type of effort for an extended period of time are less likely to challenge the status quo and more likely to fall back on tried-and-true solutions. If what they’ve always done has always generated predictable results, these individuals and teams are likely to believe that these approaches are the best, and will continue to stick to them. Unfortunately, they are not always right.

As an industry-agnostic agency, we’ve been able to clearly see that many of the best practices and norms of one industry can translate very effectively into another, often with the result of shaking things up — and winning awards. From taking a consumer-first approach in B2B marketing, to leveraging a storytelling approach about making memories in a new home rather than focusing on the construction, we’ve been able to apply best practices from multiple industries for each of our clients to create ads that stand out and get results.

When you break free from looking through a single lens, you open yourself up to see more opportunities. Think of industries you admire, even if they seem to have little to do with your own, and unpack what you admire about them. When you look at those individual elements, you’re likely to find an opportunity to shake things up — and help your brand stand out in the process.

Since 2008, Gigasavvy has helped brands find whitespace and identify opportunities to connect with their audiences with meaningful campaigns. Contact us to get help with breaking your brand free from the norm.

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Last year we started our trends article by noting the incredible pace of change that brands were facing in 2024. As AI continues to push the boundaries of what was once deemed possible, it seems that the world is surging into the year ahead even more quickly. Notably, however, 2025 shows us that some brands are now also seeing value in spending time refocusing on the principles of marketing and branding.

1. A Focus on Recovering Brand Value

Over the last few decades, brands have focused increasingly on performance marketing. The allure is obvious. With the opportunity to measure each click and impression, brands can report on performance marketing KPIs at the most granular level. However, all of this emphasis on instant gratification has caused brands to suffer over the longer term — collectively losing trillions of dollars in brand value.  

Brand strategists have been warning about this danger for years. When organizations focus on clicks and likes rather than their brand strategy, they can easily be led astray. Chasing performance can lead to many micro-concessions and discount strategies that ultimately take a brand far from its stated values over the months and years. In the long run, it’s clear that building and adhering to a solid brand strategy is the cornerstone of success.

In 2025, as Google’s CPCs have increased as much as 10% and Meta’s costs have nearly doubled for some brands, even digital marketers will begin to recognize the importance of investing in brand campaigns. Research shows that over time, those who maintain a healthy mix of brand and performance marketing can expect to experience double-digit increases in reach and decreases in cost per acquisition. 

2. Strengthening Customer Relationships

An upcoming deadline in the digital space is supercharging the need to build authentic customer relationships. By summer 2025, 85% of search engine traffic will have phased out 3rd party cookies, making it much harder to target new customers based on demographic data.

However, brands can still use their own data to speak directly to their customers. Better yet, leveraging that data to conduct first-party research can provide unique insights that allow brands to understand their customers’ motivations and pain points, and then build a marketing roadmap to respond accordingly. 77% of customers view brands more favorably when they request and act-on their feedback, leading to similar increases in customer loyalty.

Perhaps just as importantly, collecting data on existing customers allows brands to craft a complete customer data story. Understanding existing customer personas intimately can give brands important insights into their purchase triggers and their media consumption, which can help them to more accurately target similar audiences with contextual or behavioral targeting.

3. Rethinking How to Make Content that Connects

As companies focus more on brand-building in 2025, there will also be a reckoning in how to think about creating content that actually connects with customers. In 2024, although marketers had access to more data than ever, and have invested in hyper-targeted marketing, 7 out of 10 customers stated that the targeted ads they saw were irrelevant to them.

A new study suggests that this issue is created and then exacerbated by marketers and agencies who invest in creative and media-buying strategies that are driven by instinct and biases, rather than data. Marketers living in coastal cities are not likely to recognize the different perspectives of customers in middle America — a truth that became as evident in political circles as it is now proving to be in corporate America.

In 2025, savvy brands will recognize that they are unwittingly ignoring as much as 44% of their possible consumer base. As a result, they will begin to see the importance of investing in foundational market research and persona development to guide future campaigns, with a focus on speaking to audiences more authentically based on where they are geographically and in their buying cycle and testing ad concepts across each of these audiences to get the greatest return on their investment.

4. More Immersive Content Creation

In 2025, brands will be able to connect with their customers in more immersive and impactful ways. Customers are no longer bound to looking at photos and descriptions of products based on simple text-based searches. Customers are increasingly leveraging image search and conversational, voice-based search on Google and a growing stable of AI platforms. And the results they get back are shifting in response, with AI-generated summaries that explain the answers to questions being asked, rather than providing a simple list of sponsored and organic webpages.

As customers take a more dynamic approach to asking for information, they are also expecting a more dynamic approach to getting answers. Even as customers are happy to say goodbye to the cookie era, they want to interact with brands in authentically personalized ways. In fact, 76% of customers say they are frustrated by brands that do not offer personalized experiences.

To meet the conflicting demands of the moment, brands are creating immersive experiences that add value to customers’ purchase journeys. The rise in virtual showrooms, augmented reality filters, virtual try-ons, and interactive assessment tools is generating 300% brand lift, and up to 53% higher sales conversion. In 2025, brands that understand the value in building this two-way dialogue with customers and prospects will invest in the production of dynamic campaigns and high-quality, flexible photo and video assets to drive more of these immersive experiences.

5. Actionable AI

No 2025 trend article would be complete without discussing Artificial Intelligence. It’s clear that AI is more than a passing fad. The technology has exploded at breakneck speed, and there seems to be an AI-enabled tool for almost everything. In the year ahead, brands will no longer ask what AI can do, but how and why.

Brands everywhere are experimenting with AI and implementing it in various ways — especially to take on time-consuming tasks such as reporting and process optimization, which can free up resources to spend time identifying and capitalizing on insights.

The use cases are being uncovered and discovered so quickly that it would not be possible to put together an exhaustive list, but we have found a great reference to help you keep tabs on the latest developments. The savviest brands are seeing these as tools to give them the time they need to focus on building a firm foundation for their future growth.

Gigasavvy is an award-winning, strategic brand, content and creative agency that has helped many brands connect with audiences to achieve long and short-term growth. Contact us to see how we can drive results for your brand.

In a world where consumers are faced with physical and digital store shelves offering an almost endless quantity of choices, good package design is an essential element to making your product stand out. The right package design can drive consideration, influence purchase decisions, create unique experiences and generate customer loyalty. Conversely, even if all other elements are in place, a poor package design can negatively impact the path to success. 

For over 16 years, we’ve helped brands stand out and make an impact with package designs that capture the attention of buyers and directly contribute to increased product sales. Here’s an inside look at our principles of package design that have created lasting impressions.

Clearly Communicate the Brand Personality – CEFCO’s Y’ALL Package Designs

If you’ve been on a road trip anywhere ever, you’ve stepped into a convenience store that is jam-packed with brands competing for your attention. This includes private label brands, or store brands, which are small-scale Davids competing against global brand Goliaths — often with somewhat nondescript packaging that shares a brand name with the store.

CEFCO, a leading convenience store chain in the southern United States came to Gigasavvy to develop a private label brand that was decidedly NOT nondescript. After naming and designing a brand that captured the company’s light-hearted, homespun southern roots, we moved on to create package designs for a series of products from water to jerky, to salty, crunchy snacks.

Our Y’ALL brand package design leverages sassy southern nomenclature, rich colors, eye-catching imagery and bold typography that cannot be ignored to bring a little “somethin’ extra” to the C-store shelves. Our new branding and packaging immediately won customers over, with the updated labels quickly becoming number one sellers in a store full of global brands.

Clearly Communicate the Brand Promise – Beach Whiskey Package Designs

Darco Spirits makes fun, high-quality spirits with personality. When deciding to expand on their Beach Whiskey brand with a new line of canned, ready-to-drink cocktails, they came to Gigasavvy to help them develop packaging that would stand out on store shelves packed with a growing selection of both classic and emerging brands.

To drive purchase behavior, we needed to create packaging that would not only catch buyers’ eyes, but would immediately evoke a relaxed, summertime frame of mind all year-round that is hard to turn away from. To achieve this, Gigasavvy conceptualized a Summer in a Can package design, which immediately communicates the Beach Whiskey’s brand promise for a good time that always feels fresh and easy. 

The package designs leverage breezy colors with playful fonts and sunny imagery to communicate beachy summer vibes that immediately conjure up a sense of endless summer nostalgia and beachside bonfires. This instantly sets customer expectations for the flavor profiles, drawing target audiences in for a closer look— and leading to significant increases in sales, clicks and impressions.

Clearly Communicate the Product – Flame Broiler Package Designs

Flame Broiler started as a single family restaurant committed to delivering delicious food that was healthy, convenient and fairly priced. The fresh ingredients with Korean-inspired flavors were a hit and soon the small restaurant grew to a brand with more than 200 locations across California, Arizona and Florida. As the brand grew, so did opportunities to diversify revenue with a line of bottled sauces.

Gigasavvy worked with Flame Broiler to develop bottled sauce package designs and product names that would immediately communicate the flavor profile and Korean culture behind each bottled sauce, and inspire restaurant patrons to Fuel their Flame any time by keeping their favorite flavors on hand at home. Drawing from the bold color palette and iconography of the brand identity we had already created, each bottle leverages color blocking with a distinctive color and imagery to set flavor expectations.

The package design and associated launch campaign were a hit, generating a 14% lift in brand sentiment among consumers who were surveyed before and after exposure to the product spot, and driving a 62% year-over-year increase in digital media placement clicks.

Align to the Target Audience  – Brandini Toffee Package Designs

Founded in Palm Springs, Brandini Toffee started as a small-batch toffee company that leveraged a family recipe to bring joy to audiences with a sweet treat. Years later, the brand had expanded with a factory which operates year round to support a busy holiday sales season. The high-quality toffee had become a favorite among older consumers, but the brand wanted to broaden their appeal and expand sales among younger audiences. 

Gigasavvy developed new, more modern branding which leveraged their Palm Springs roots and an iconic desert vibe to pull younger consumers in. The new Brandini Toffee package designs use crisp black and white color blocking to communicate the premium nature of the product, while taking inspiration from Palm Springs-style breeze blocks to incorporate a subtle brand pattern that helps to capture attention. In addition to classic gift boxes, Gigasavvy also designed new candy bags, which helped Brandini toffee to diversify revenue streams with new shelf space at Costco.

The new package designs were a hit. In the first holiday season after the updated packaging was revealed dwelltime on the company website increased by nearly 53% as customers viewed 26% more pages per session, ultimately leading to a 25% increase in online sales.

Create a Customer Experience – Sugarfina Package Designs

One can never overestimate the importance of delighting customers with fun brand experiences. That was our guiding principle when we worked with Sugarfina to boost online sales for the holiday season.

Though the project was not initially brought to us as a package design exercise, Gigasavvy came up with a big idea that leveraged an entirely unique packaging concept to create a memorable gifting experience which would delight customers and drive incremental sales volume.

The Build Your Own Bento Box package design for Sugarfina made the online shopping and gift-giving experience entirely customizable and allowed givers to gift a variety of Sugarfina’s fun and whimsical flavors, all in one beautifully-crafted box. As consumers became more educated on the product they saw opportunities to give more flavors to more special people in their lives, resulting in a 116% increase in website traffic and 57% higher sales. 

These are just some examples of how big ideas and smart, well designed packaging can drive real business results. It is more than a physical container. The right packaging shapes customers’ perceptions. It helps your product get noticed online and in stores, communicates your brand’s value, messaging and positioning, and surprises and delights your customers.

Gigasavvy is an award-winning brand strategy, content creation and creative agency that has successfully brought many brands to market with measurable results. Contact us to talk about how we can breathe life into your brand.

Sometimes it’s easy to get so busy doing, that there is not a lot of time left for thinking. In marketing departments, this can lead to habitual, year-over-year marketing plans with very similar campaigns from one season to the next. Well executed plans can lead to incremental growth, but secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) we all wish and hope that one of our campaigns will create a monumental shift. As we head into budget season, make room to achieve big success with your 2025 planning.

Shaking up your business requires new thinking. Specifically, it requires new thinking that leads to big ideas. But that is much easier said than done. Sadly, just sitting down and saying, “I’m going to have a big idea now” does not work. As an agency that specializes in solving some of our client’s biggest problems with creativity and big ideas, we’ve put together some insights to help you get there.

Get Crystal Clear on Goals

Setting goals to grow revenue by X%, or to increase clicks by Y% is important, but it’s also tactical. To set yourself up for a big idea that can actually drive real business results, you need to pull back from these lower-level goals and think at a more macro level. What do you really want to accomplish from a big-picture perspective?

Do you hear crickets when you ask that question out loud? Your brand mission statement and brand values may be able to serve as a guide to help you get started. For example, does your brand stand for embracing the differences that make the world fun and interesting, or making it easy for people to experience joy? Though it may sound lofty, this is where you should start when creating your goals.

Then, rather than a goal to increase revenue by X%, you can layer in your brand’s mission, vision and values to create a bigger picture goal like spreading joy to a new generation of Americans. This now gives you an authentic direction to create the big ideas which can drive the X% revenue growth you are after.

Identify the Problems and Opportunities

Once you have a lofty goal, you may see an exciting, untapped opportunity. It’s also likely that you’ll quickly start to see problems with achieving it. That’s not just okay, it’s great! Giving yourself problems to solve can help lead you down a path toward a big idea.

Mind you, the path to a big idea is rarely straight and is more like a maze.. As you start to define how you will move forward, you’ll find that the idea doesn’t work for some reason or other. In a maze, you don’t quit, you back up and try a new route. As long as you trust that the goal can be achieved, you can do this as many times as is needed to get there.

Get Outsiders’ Perspectives

This is important, because working with a lack of diverse input is one of the biggest barriers to creativity. Often, especially if you’ve done the same thing in the same place for so long, finding a new route seems impossible. This is where it helps to get an outsider’s perspective. There are many ways to do this.

At Gigasavvy, we often talk directly with customers to understand what is resonating, and also talk with a wide range of internal stakeholders to uncover challenges and insights from other departments. Since we are industry agnostic, we also are fortunate to have firsthand knowledge about what is resonating with similar audiences in other industries.

With these additional insights and perspectives, we can approach problems and opportunities from different angles. And that’s when big ideas are ripe for the picking.

Identify Roadblocks

When the big idea hits, you want to get started on it right away. Here, as you begin to assess your internal resources and compare it against all that is needed to make your idea a reality, you may start to run into more roadblocks. That’s okay too! Look for ways to solve the problems, rather than compromise on a solution, and you may find that your roadblocks can make the big idea even better.

If, with all of the internal resources you have at your disposal, you cannot bring your idea to fruition, begin to think outside of your four walls. Do you need more expertise, more capacity, more collaboration? The help of an agency? All of those things can be had.

Make Sure You Have the Money

It’s easy to fall into a trap of allocating every bit of budget to routine marketing campaigns and tasks. Unfortunately, this does not leave room to bring big ideas to life. Of course you can pitch the big idea to executive team members and ask for incremental funds. And if the idea is strong enough, this may work. It may also end up with you delaying your big idea a full year until the next budget comes around.

The easier way to combat a lack of funds is to earmark money at the beginning of your budget planning session. Set aside funds that will be deployed in campaign development in support of your big idea. That may seem risky during budget season, in Q3 or Q4 of this year, in the absence of next year’s idea. But, don’t set yourself up to settle. You cannot be successful if you don’t set yourself up for success. 

Gigasavvy is a forward-looking creative agency partner that believes in the power of big ideas. We believe every brand has a compelling story to tell. Contact us to help you tell yours.

Why do brands leverage old imagery to promote new products? “When you play on nostalgia, you’re bringing people back to a simpler time, and the familiar comfort that comes with a shared experience with your peers,”says Jones Krahl, Deloitte Digital’s co-head of creative brand and advertising, along with Milton Correa.

Simply put, when people see these ads, they don’t just see the ads, they feel all of the old feelings associated with their memories of a time gone by. And these feelings are unique and different for every individual. While some may experience happiness, research shows that nostalgia also brings about a range of other emotions, such as feelings of comfort and security. And, if the imagery is relevant and authentic to your brand, consumers will naturally transfer all of those feelings to your product.

Nostalgia Marketing is not new, but has increased in popularity lately. Brands are increasingly featuring new takes on old narratives in order to hype their products. It’s now become commonplace to see things like the classic Nintendo being featured in commercials for the new Nintendo Switch.

Brands don’t have to be old to leverage nostalgia marketing. Even if your brand or your product is completely new, you can leverage imagery to bring about the positive feelings of yesteryear.

Here’s how:

1. Understand your audience. If you are targeting millennials, think about what shared experiences they’ve likely had which would make sense to include in your advertising – featuring models with frosted tips or dancing to NSYNC’s Bye-Bye-Bye, for example. 
2. Don’t be afraid to mimic. Okay, maybe licensing NSYNC’s music isn’t in the cards. But a video that does show teens and young adults dancing a choreographed scene to boy-band music will still make your point, and be a lot of fun in the process.
3. Go all in. If you’re bringing a specific era to life in your advertising, do it all the way. From fashions and hairstyles to color palettes and set designs, lean into every stereotype to make sure that nothing about your campaign is subtle enough to be mistaken or overlooked. 
4. Leverage your brand identity. Take inspiration from your company’s history, and your brand’s mission, vision, purpose and brand pillars to connect with your audience based on where you’ve been, and when you were there.
5. Have fun. Nostalgia marketing is all about evoking happier memories, so do sell your product’s features and benefits, but don’t take your brand too seriously. Keep it light-hearted and fun.

Are you curious about how nostalgia marketing could work for your brand? Chat with us to talk through some ideas.

Gigasavvy is a content creation, brand strategy and creative agency that has successfully brought many brands to life with award-winning, authentic storytelling. Contact us to see how we can help you tell your brand’s story.

My initial reaction to this slew of content is to feel revolutionized yet instantly behind the curve. If AI is brand new, how have so many people managed to become experts? Published experts. Published and profitable experts. 

Perhaps this is because AI isn’t actually new. The term ‘AI’ was coined in the early 1950s but the concept of technology and non-human tools has been around since the Stone Age.

A Brief History of the Future 

In 1988, Pixar released one of their most successful short films. Despite financial constraints, Steve Jobs agreed, in the midst of a complete financial shutdown, to fund the project; and the Oscar Award Winning cartoon ‘Tin Toy’ aired at a 1988 SIGGRAPH Convention to standing ovation. This film was the first official test of a software called ‘PhotoRealistic RenderMan’ and was ultimately responsible for making computer animation a credible form of artistic production. Later in 2003, The Library of Congress elected this film for preservation in the US National Film Registry dubbing it ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” 

If you are scratching your head and trying to figure out why in the golden era of Pixar masterpieces, you do not remember anything about a toy named Tinny desperately trying to escape Billy the infant, it’s because the movie was wildly rejected by the public. 

While the PhotoRealistic RenderMan software was truly spectacular, audiences hated the realistic features. Billy looked so human that it made people uncomfortable. Judge Adam Areseneau referred to this film in a DVD Verdict in late 2007 as “the most frightening and disturbing piece of animation in the history of this art form.” This feeling of unsettled rejection to human-like attributes, known as “Uncanny Valley Phenomenon”, is largely subjective and has been debated since the early ‘70s. Is this something that we need to ‘force’ humans to ‘get over’? Or is this something that we just need to accept, and continue producing lesser value productions for greater human enjoyment? I suppose this lends to the greater question, do we create to contribute, or just for the sake of saying we created something? 

Fast forward to 2022, ChatGPT is released and the business world collectively loses their mind in pure panic mode trying to determine how and if to incorporate this revolutionary AI technology into their every day business. 

Is it safe? Will it catch on? Are our competitors using it? Will it replace employees or require more skillsets? How are we going to find time to learn this? Can we use it to publish a blog about how we are at the cutting edge of using it while we figure out how to use it? 

So, where do we start?

Let’s start with understanding the vernacular and distinguishing ‘AI’ from its buzzword counterpart. 

AI (artificial intelligence) is an all encompassing term that essentially refers to any non-human generated smarts. This is in itself a paradox since humans are the ones who have to feed any technological algorithm. 

ChatGPT, while not synonymous with AI, uses the concept of AI to act as a virtual assistant. While chatbot technology has been around since the 1960s, ChatGPT certainly upleveled that capability and is largely responsible for the recent surge in AI trending language. 

But while your headlines may presently be drowning in AI tagged headlines that basically all say “AI has developed new technology…. We’re not sure how to use it… but it’s here and you/we should probably look into this”, AI is not new. 

The Magic of a Good PR Spin

If there’s one thing marketers do exceptionally well, it is capitalizing on profitable products/services by pushing the same thing in a plethora of positioning variations. Leave it to marketing pros to support and proliferate ideas until they no longer hold any meaning. (Taylor Swift watches football. Enough Said.) 

While AI continues to evolve and offer advanced use-cases and iterations, we needn’t panic about the overhaul of everything we know and understand about the world. Because we have already co-created with AI for decades. 

Respond > React

It’s natural for marketers to live a bit on edge. The world is changing, trends are flying (thanks Internet), and with the flooding of new data every second, our understanding and positioning as well as that of our customers is shifting sometimes daily. With the fire under our feet and expectations to deliver exceptional marketing in the same way we did before our consumers had access to every transparent piece of information, this can be a daunting and frankly impossible ask for anyone to oblige. 

Instead of reacting to every ‘new’ trend or buzzword, let’s respond. Reacting is impulsive and often rooted in panic and emotion. We immediately jump into tactics and make long-term decisions based on short-term insights. This can be exhausting as well as expensive as we are tasked with continually shifting direction. It’s like starting from scratch every single day.

When we respond, we pause to absorb the information we are receiving, and we wait until emotion subsides. We think about how to leverage what we already have, and we walk confidently forward in the same direction we have invested our time, energy, and dollars into since inception. 

Leveraging AI 

The goal of any business is to maximize profits and impact. When we partner with businesses to strengthen their brand, one of the first things we look for is their difference. What sets this brand apart from any other competitive offering? What is their story, their WHY, their personality? What can we share with their audience that they won’t be able to get anywhere else? One of the best ways I find to leverage AI is to sift and sort through the copious amounts of information available and use that to streamline your messaging.

Do marketers need to think about AI? Probably. But isn’t that in our job description as marketers? To think about everything? 

What do we do with this information?

AI can be a great asset to your business. You can use it to research, automate, streamline, annotate…. But a tool is only as useful as the craftsman who knows how to use it. 

Technology has existed and evolved since the beginning of time. Ideas are tossed to the masses and the acceptance or rejection of any new idea or change is largely rooted in providence and timing. AI, along with any other marketable product, will continue to be re-named, re-positioned, and re-released to capitalize on current trends. This is marketing.

Where do we as marketers draw the line between creating to contribute, and creating for our own egos? And when does this become problematic? 

It’s not a question of whether or not the world should exist with AI, but rather how do we best use it to better the human experience. With the potential gain of technology, what are the potential losses? If we benefit from saving time and money at the expense of cutting thousands of job roles, what does that mean for our economy? For morale? 

Our job as marketers, as creatives, is to not only know how to create, but when to stop. Going back to the uncanny valley phenomenon, Tin Toy was shelved, but ultimately became the story plot for another popular film series. With some revised and overly-animated cartooning and an A-list cast, Tiny Toy became what we now know and love as Toy Story, which ultimately inspired a whole new world of both award-winning and beloved entertainment. 

Going back to HI

There is power in the story we create. The words we use and the frame we package truth within can dramatically alter perception and results, even when working with the exact same, accurate, data. 

While we continue to tinker with technological advancements, it is crucial now more than ever that we highlight and preserve human intelligence and well-being. Considerations such as legal protections, plagiarism, privacy breaches, psychological impact, economic impact, etc are real human challenges that require exceptional levels of intelligence and discernment. 

What is the real WHY behind technology? I would argue that technology exists to improve the human experience. It exists to make our lives easier, better, and more flexible so that we can enjoy more human experiences. Creativity without contribution is no longer about creating, but taking. Rather than hyper-focusing on the intricacies of technological tools, let’s put the focus back on connecting with our customers. This is where the real magic happens. 

Gigasavvy helps brands move their business forward and position themselves for long-term success with comprehensive strategies, meaningful brand stories, and innovative creative campaigns. Connect with us to chat about how we can help you bring your brand into the future. 

At Gigasavvy, we don’t think anything cuts through the noise better than good storytelling. You don’t have to compete; you just have to connect. That takes good strategy, a compelling narrative, and good production. How do we achieve this magic? We’re going to let you in on some of our secrets with a look at our content creation process. 

Understanding Your (Actual) Content Creation Needs

Obviously, our clients typically have products or services to sell, and platforms to sell on. But it would be a mistake to think of selling first. Great projects don’t start with a decision to make a viral video or to hop on a TikTok trend. They start with a decision to tell your brand or product story to a relevant audience. With that objective in mind, you can produce content that can easily be formatted for any platform.  

Understanding Your Audiences

When thinking of audiences, it’s easy to jump ahead to think about buyers. It’s also easy to ignore the buyer and only listen to the brand. But good content creation requires investing the time to fully know BOTH. That’s why our discovery process is not a simple one-hour meeting with a checklist of questions. 

Sure there is a discovery meeting. But that is neither the beginning nor the end. We continue discovering things about our clients and their customers for as long as we work together. We dig in deep to get to know our clients: Why do they do what they do? What are their business goals? What inspires them? How do they define success? 

And we dig just as deep to understand their customers. Only after we are armed with this strategic foundation can we develop a strong creative brief that gets to the heart — the core human truth — so that it will resonate with all people, even if they are not in our target audience.  

Weaving a Narrative 

We know we are intruding on peoples’ lives with the ads we create, so we want to make sure it’s really worth it. We take special care to speak to what they care about —  and to do so in a way that matters and inspires. 

We believe in relentlessly attacking the creative brief to accomplish this. Our creative, strategy and account teams work together — asking every question, debating every nuance, and looking at things from every angle to make sure we have it right. Then, when we have a clear and concise creative brief that gets to the heart of the matter our team works together to visualize stories that connect. 

With our approach we get to know our clients so well that it is often hard for them to choose among multiple concepts that really fit their needs.

Considering the Channels 

You may have felt something has been missing in the process described thus far. We have not yet talked about the channels where the content will live. That is not an oversight; it is an intentional order of operation. While we definitely create for and manage to the media plan, we don’t believe that impactful projects start with a goal of “making a viral video” or producing a video for TikTok, etc. We believe that the story comes first. After the story is outlined, we create custom content that consistently tells that story in a way that is native to each of the media platforms where it will live.

Bringing it to Life in Production 

With the story agreed on and the appropriate channels established, we get to work on production. At this point, some creatives prefer to go work and come back with a finished project. At Gigasavvy, we believe it’s important to continue to collaborate with our clients to make sure they are heard and understood at every stage of the process. 

We recognize that at any point — from location scouting and talent management to filming and post production — there may be a need to enhance, update or pivot. We embrace flexibility within a framework in order to create the best deliverable.

Project Wrap-Up

As mentioned above, discovery never stops. We don’t wait for things to go wrong and schedule a project retrospective. We proactively wrap every project with a discussion on all of the things that went right, and any learnings or opportunities for future projects. Whether our key takeaways are client specific, project specific or process-oriented, we take the mindset that there is always something to celebrate, and always something to learn. 

With that, we are ready to start the whole process over again with another happy client. Next time, maybe it will be you. Just let us know what you’re ready to work on.

Gigasavvy is an award-winning content creation, brand strategy and creative agency that has successfully developed and brought many brands to life with authentic storytelling. Contact us to see how we can help you tell your brand’s story.