And, before you jump ahead, no, we’re not a creative agency either. Though you’re getting warmer.
We’re a Creative-first agency, which means creativity isn’t a bolt-on to what we do. It is what we do. And that’s true of all of us, no matter the department we sit in. It’s made sure of. Every person that attends an interview for RBH (after an initial, ‘You like dogs, right?’) will be foremost looked at for their ability to think creatively – to surprise us.
Because on every client brief that comes in, we ask ourselves how we can approach it in a way that hasn’t been done before. That means that all our work, not just our big brand campaigns but our insight and planning, our digital, SEO and our PR, is driven by brilliantly unconventional and always effective creative thinking.
A member of our digital team isn’t expected to throw together a scamp like one of our designers might, but we acknowledge that their approach can be as inventive and original as a musician in freestyle. Ultimately, we want clients to reframe how they themselves view creativity and creative. Here, one can look at ‘creativity’ as the approach and ‘creative’ as the output.
What’s the difference between a marketing agency, a creative agency, and a Creative-first agency?
If you’re asking what the difference is between a marketing agency, a creative agency and a Creative-first agency, here’s one way to think about it: a marketing agency keeps creativity outside of its walls, a creative agency seats creativity behind certain walls, a Creative-first agency has no walls – only those to paint on. Naturally, the paint gets on everything.
Traditionally, marketing agencies are brought in by businesses for strategy, research, planning and digital, while creative agencies are brought in for concept, branding, visuals, content and asset creation. A singular agency that can provide both sides of these is sometimes referred to as a ‘full-service agency.’ Which, technically, is one of the banners you could hang over our agency too.
However, full service isn’t entirely reflective of our approach. Though we are perfectly capable of carrying a brief from conception to delivery across a litany of scales, after 30 years of providing creative marketing solutions, we have developed and refined our own unique framework for this process.
We call this our Creative-first Framework, which is composed of six steps:
1. Brief
You provide us with a full brief outlining your business objectives.
2. Challenge
At this point we interrogate your brief, determine what it is you actually need, and how we’ll get there.
3. Insight development
We uncover insights that give us a true picture of the behaviour relevant to our brief.
4. Determination
We now identify whether our solution should change or respond to the relevant audience behaviour.
5. Solution
At this stage we relay our findings to you and decide on a strategy to solve your brief.
6. Action
We now begin work developing the decided output using either an integrated or a modular approach.
But the best and truest way to understand how a Creative-first agency works, is to work with us. To find a full breakdown of every service we provide, click here: https://rbh.co.uk/services/digital-marketing/
