A common challenge that in-house agencies (IHAs) have always faced is difficulty in training and hiring the talent they need to pull off excellent creative. Unfortunately, this strain doesn’t seem to be going away. According to a survey by the ANA, 44% of US IHAs cite attracting top-tier talent as a primary creative content concern. And it’s not just about merely acquiring talent: an even bigger challenge they face lies in keeping their talent energized.

It’s no surprise, then, that so many external partnerships for IHAs revolve around two key capabilities: executing ideas in new and interesting ways, or offering access to specialized skillsets. Both are key in today’s digital landscape, which is defined as an age of hyperadoption, in which users adopt and drop new behaviors at an unprecedented rate. In addition to all of the channels that are cropping up, you don’t even know which will stick around a few years down the line.

As brands gauge the next big channels they’ll use to connect with consumers, they must adopt new digital skillsets in lockstep. But given the talent concerns mentioned above, how can IHAs keep up with these shifting user behaviors? The answer lies in new breeds of partnership that give IHAs the skills and tools they need to fulfill the brand promise in ways that not only stand out and “wow” consumers, but make sense to them.

Stand Out by Innovating Strategically

In his talk at the IHAF Conference this week, which brings together and celebrates hundreds of in-house agency professionals, Forrester analyst Jay Pattisall discussed the importance of creative differentiation. Most digital experiences look and feel the same, opening an opportunity for brands to stand out through best-in-class creative. Fitting well within the conference’s theme of “Futureproof,” Pattisall set his focus on recent shifts in the creative landscape, and where IHAs fit within it.

IHAs have thrived thanks in part to their unrivalled brand knowledge; they understand the purpose, intricacies and nuances of their brand. As Darren Abbott, SVP, Creative at Hallmark said while noting the power of IHAs to their brands: “We’re not part of Hallmark, we make it Hallmark.”

Yet executing their vision in an environment that encompasses so many emerging channels can be tough. New partnership models that aim to augment in-house teams’ understanding of technology, or that push them to think in new ways, can aid in both forecasting future opportunities and identifying the best channels available today for bringing the brand experience to life.

If you’re intrigued by some of today’s emergent technology, consider putting it through what MediaMonks Founder and COO Wesley ter Haar calls the “trend lens.” Discussed in his skill session at the IHAF Conference, “Extending Beyond the Horizon,” ter Haar described the trend lens as a strategy through which you can gauge the maturity of emerging tech as it rises up—or drops off from—the hype curve. It’s how we help brands arrive at solutions that best fit their capabilities and needs.

Let Your Brand Story Drive Tech Investment

The assessment specifically measures how a technology or platform meets user behavior (what consumers are doing with it) and distribution (how widely it’s adopted). VR, for example, isn’t distributed among consumers as well as AR is; this makes the former more ideal for installations and trade shows, while the latter serves as a popular way for consumers to simultaneously connect with brands and communicate with friends on mobile.

The trend lens works because it asks brands to really consider how their audience naturally behaves on a given channel. But brands must ensure that the creative idea is aligned with a clear business goal. At MediaMonks, for example, we don’t strive to sell brands on whatever the hot, novel technology of the day is. Instead, we experiment to push technology to its limit ourselves, then pay those learnings forward to help brands approach emerging tech strategically and tell their stories the best way they can.

Again, an IHA’s strength stems from its passion and knowledge of the brand. External partnerships that challenge their approach to creative and assess new opportunities granted by emerging tech are essential for futureproofing and connecting with consumers as the digital landscape continues to evolve.

What separates your brand from competitors? Across industries, brands are increasingly investing and allocating resources to improving the customer experience (CX). While that’s great news for customers and the audiences they serve, for brands, it means they’ll have to work much harder to stand out. With a sea of sameness looming over the horizon, brands must hone in on their key, unique qualities that differentiate them from the rest through best-in-class creative experiences. 

Creative differentiation is more than simply raising awareness or traditional notions of driving customer loyalty. In his Forrester report “The Cost of Losing Creativity,” Jay Pattisall writes that “every brand offers the same digital experience because they all address the same customer needs.” Rather than fulfill the same KPIs as their competition, organizations must seek out opportunities that fulfill a unique brand promise and offer memorable creative experiences.

MediaMonks Founder and COO Wesley ter Haar notes that what separates average or even good creative from truly exceptional work is impact. “It’s not just about big ideas. If you have the right idea, you have to go really big on the idea itself,” he says. “The scale of those ideas–the way you commit to them to have real impact–defines the pinnacle of creative work.”

One way brands can begin thinking about this is through purpose. Look at it this way: while you might know your brand’s purpose, what really matters is whether consumers do. 76% of brands may think their organizations have a defined purpose, but only one in ten have actually defined a purpose statement that they’ve put into action, according to the ANA. 

When faced with competition from digitally-native brands that have integrated purpose well within their platforms (like making it easier to get a ride in a couple of taps at a guaranteed rate), brands must likewise ensure their promise is fulfilled through the creative user experience. It’s through these experiences, if done right, that brands can strike an emotional connection and build brand love in the mind of consumers.

Creativity as a Key Factor

The challenge of creative differentiation is felt across all industries these days, though it’s especially relevant to industries that push traditional strategies around growing loyalty–retailers, travel brands, and fintech are just some of the industries that could benefit most by embracing creative differentiation. As part of a digital transformation process, MediaMonks worked with leading Mexican airline brand Aeroméxico to revamp their app, turning the typical ticket-booking experience into a space for wanderlust and travel inspiration.

“What differentiates one brand from another nowadays?” asks Carlos Rivera, Consulting and Platforms Lead at MediaMonks Mexico. “Loyalty is not easily achieved unless through experiences that result in habits or small moments that inject emotion to the customer journey.”

Craft alone doesn’t solve the challenge. Brands must leverage consumer insights and data to address and solve the primary needs of customers, aligning the essence of their brand with a strategy that reacts to those needs. This makes all the difference between novelty and designing truly differentiated experiences that cultivate lasting emotional and business impact. “Differentiated creative combines an understanding of culture with real, heavy-lifting business impact that drives real bottom line value,” says ter Haar.

The process must begin with placing the human at the center of your creative focus. Working with Aeroméxico, MediaMonks put this idea into practice, helping the brand creatively differentiate by striving to truly transform the full scope of the customer experience. 

“Often it’s not about the place you’re going; it’s about the person you’re visiting,” says ter Haar. “This insight bubbled up, can we build people into the app as a destination? That’s a really nice message and normally if you look at the siloed nature of our industry, that’d be it–with some shiny creative around it. Instead, we’re filling the gaps. Yes, there’s creative and an app, but what’s happening in between?”

This question sparked the development of “People are the Places” for Aeroméxico, a state-of-the-art platform that enables the brand to build meaningful relationships by letting travelers experience places like never before: linking them to the people actually living there. This experience was recognized with the Gold Cannes Lion 2019 in Brand Experience & Activation.

What separates the best from the rest?

The challenge in embedding such emotive experiences in a platform lies in “trying to communicate different experiences to different audiences,” says Aeroméxico’s Angélica Romero, UX and Web Optimization Lead. Brands must design strategies to create personalized experiences that impact users directly and make those experiences memorable. For example, once a user fills in their profile in the Aeromexico app, their name appears throughout the reservation flow, along with geolocalization and recent searches, which anticipate their needs and require fewer taps for them to take.

Redesigning the Customer Experience

Nowadays, many brands are redesigning their corporate image, but these tweaks are often a matter of brand identity. True transformation requires balancing commercial goals with experiences that resonate with consumers. The challenge with the Aeroméxico app was clear from the start: establish a strategy to increase ticket sales by improving the experience of buying a ticket in mobile format. This prompted the team to study the booking process, looking for opportunities to redesign the process as a whole, from discovering flights to inspiring users to act on a destination–a strategy that we’ve taken with subsequent campaigns for the brand, too.

The focus was put not only on helping the user find flights, but also on inspiring them to travel. “And so we launched the complete redesign of the reservations section with a user-thought experience process,” says Carlos Rivera. “We carried out prototypes, interviews and even testing sessions to ensure that every button made sense and to determine what information to show at what time during the reservation flow.” From color choice to animations, each element in the process serves a specific purpose to impact the user experience. Through ongoing analysis, MediaMonks and the Aeroméxico team can tweak and adjust the app to enhance the CX even further and continuously iterate.

González notes that the centerpiece of the design is how visual elements change and conform as the user follows the flow. From the background image that changes when you select the destination, to the copy and image that indicate the step in which you are in the header of each screen, the design builds a sense of excitement and anticipation before culminating in an animated message that lets you know that “Your trip is ready!”

“We know that buying a plane ticket is a rational decision,” says González. “But that carries a very important emotional load because, in the end, it materializes in your next trip: It’s happening!” 

Creating user-centered experiences goes a long way to help brands make their purpose clear and to establish the differentiator that will make them stand out from the crowd. Addressing customer’s needs is something any brand can do, but doing it in a relevant and unique way is something only brands with defined purposes can aspire to achieve.

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Adobe MAX came and went this week in LA, bringing creative professionals together with hundreds of sessions, workshops and talks. Aiming to inspire the current and next generation of creatives, the event offered rousing insights into the state of creativity today—and opportunities that artists, entertainers and brands alike can look forward to in the near future, including the next stage in storytelling defined by MediaMonks Founder and COO Wesley ter Haar, who presented at the event.

The conference began with Adobe unveiling a slew of new product updates and features, each bringing the company closer to its vision of enabling “Creativity for all,” which served as a bit of a rallying cry at the event. These announcements included Photoshop Camera, which uses machine learning to offer advanced photo filters and quick, intuitive editing; Premiere Rush, which notably lets users create and share out content to creative social platform TikTok; Adobe Aero, which lets anyone develop AR experiences without coding knowledge; and much more.

One of the biggest conferences on creativity, this year’s Adobe MAX offered much to think about in terms of identity, voice and emotionally resonant experiences. As Adobe aims to unlock creativity for everyone, it will become even more essential that brands differentiate by building emotional resonance through the experiences they offer.

At the heart of software like Photoshop Camera is Adobe Sensei, the company’s decidedly not-very-humanlike assistant. At a time when many have concerns over how AI will influence professional (and creative) life, Adobe markets Sensei as simply a tool that helps humans focus on what only they can do: be creative, with Sensei handling the manual processes that function as a barrier to that. But when everyone has advanced creative tools at their fingertips, what does it take to stand out? We’ve extracted a handful of key creative insights from the course of the event.

Know Your Message and What You Stand For

Of course, being a conference centered on creativity, Adobe MAX featured several voices from the world of arts and entertainment. While their insights were delivered to an audience of creatives and designers, a lot of what they had to say serves as good advice for business, too—after all, being an artist in the modern world requires a bit of an entrepreneurial edge.

Visual artist Shantell Martin opened day two’s keynote segment with an inspiring talk about stylistic voice and identity. “You have to make people care for you by caring for yourself first,” she told the audience. Further in her talk, she noted that “You don’t discover your style, you extract it.”

The advice applies well to brands still defining a sense of purpose. For anyone to adopt your brand—and to truly differentiate it—you must first have a good hold on what its purpose is and what you stand for. This also makes it useful to consider how that purpose might resonate differently with different audiences. Digital-native brands in particular have succeeded in this by defining themselves out of a specific need or white space, then leveraging digital channels to align with consumers through that shared sense of purpose.

Take Comfort in Discomfort

Earlier in the conference, illustrator Lisa Congdon offered her own excellent advice on artist voice: “[Finding your voice is] both an exercise in discipline and process of discovery that allows for—and requires—loads of experimentation and failure.” While that’s certainly true for brand voice, it also applies to the innovation imperative.

Innovation requires you not only understand what your brand aims to achieve, but also have an intimate understanding of your audience and how they interact. In an age of hyperadoption, real innovation comes from evolving your brand experience in lockstep with user behaviors and continual experimentation. Congdon recommends that creatives adopt a learner’s mindset that’s open to risks and embraces discomfort—an attitude that not only fosters a creative environment but can also kickstart more agile ways of working.

Open a New Chapter in the Story of Storytelling

All of the above boils down to ensuring your message truly resonates with your audience. Throughout history, humans have used the power of narrative and storytelling to achieve this, but interactive digital culture has upended the storytelling norms that had traditionally prevailed. In an on-stage interview with Jason Levine, Principal Worldwide Evangelist for Adobe Creative Cloud, famed director M. Night Shyamalan remarked that “Everything in today’s society goes back to storytelling. Right now, we’re split between fighting for the old story, and fighting for the new story. It’s time to bring in the new story.”

What does that new story look like? That’s what Wesley ter Haar aimed to define in his talk, “Augmented Creativity: Emerging Platforms that Drive the Next Generation of Storytelling.” Ter Haar railed against the variations of storytelling that frequently pop up at conferences—like “storydoing” or “storymaking”—by noting that each still relies on the same form of linear narrative that today’s marketeers should break away from. “We’ve taken what is this amazing medium for creativity and innovation—the web, the internet or what we now call digital—but we’ve made it about traditional linear formats,” he says.

Netflix’s Bandersnatch might have brought interactive film to the masses last year, for instance, but it was hardly groundbreaking or immersive compared to what’s come before it; video games had already explored what ter Haar calls the “interrupt to interact” narrative model for decades, and we’ve moved away from truly personalized experiences enabled by an API-driven open web. And when it comes to personalization as it’s commonly used, says ter Haar, “There’s a lot of engineering, but very little empathy.”

In a new era of ecosystems and total brand experience, ter Haar calls for a new definition of storytelling: “A journey focused on the user that creates a personal path, driven by design and distinction, powered by innovation.” And these stories should show no end, either: “Digital storytelling is more input-based, trying to get the next ‘yes, and…’ moment,” says ter Haar, noting how each piece of content ideally leads into the next step within a content ecosystem. To offer stories that truly resonate, brands must use storytelling to bridge together creative and media. This requires breaking away from big ideas that function like film, and instead drive impact by recognizing user behaviors and shifting toward an insight-driven focus on the customer experience.