What I do

The word Creative comes from the 14th-century Latin word creatus which means “to make”, “to bring forth” or “to produce”. The word entered the English lexicon from the Old French word creatif, which originally described the divine power of creation that belongs to God, but around the 19th century the semantic range of the word increased to include human imagination and invention.

So when I say I am “a creative” that means I make, bring forth, and produce things by use of my imaginative spirit; I believe this spirit comes from humans being made in the image of a creative God. Where God said “let there be light” and stretched out the heavens like a curtain, I say “let there be imagery” or “let there be copy”.

So if being Creative is the internal goal, means, and identity of my vocation, Marketing is the external ends.

The word Marketing comes from a 16th-century term for buying and selling in a market, originating from the Latin mercatus, meaning “marketplace” or “place of trading” and mercor, meaning “the act of trade” or “trading”. Marketing, fundamentally, is about human relationship in the domain of economic exchange.

In the modern digital economy, this doesn’t always involve currency; It more often involves attention. While some strategies measure success by driving revenue (how many leads did the marketing give to the sales team, and what was the quality of those leads) other strategies are now entirely focused on the currency of attention. In this case, a relationship of exchange is still occuring: I am providing valuable content and you are purchasing through spending your limited currency of time, attention, and engagement. It’s still marketing, but the economy (and likewise, how performance is measured) exists at a different level.

So Creative Marketing is ultimate goal and vocation of what I do, but Media is the “how” of what I do.

The English word Media comes from the plural form of the Latin word medium, meaning “middle,” “intermediate,” or “intervening substance”. In English, it’s used to describe a channel or method of communication that sits in between a communicator and recipient – something like TV, radio, or video.

To understand what media is, it’s helpful to look at its linguistic relative: Medium. Medium has not one, but three different meanings in English, all of which point back to the same abstract concept of “middle” or “intermediary”.

The first meaning of Medium is a descriptor of level or location: “The temperature was set at medium” or “speak at a medium volume”. In this case, it refers to a middle intermediary area between “low” and “high”.

The second meaning of Medium is a descriptor of tool, especially for an artist or craftsperson. Paints or inks might be the medium of an artist, film or digital the medium of a filmmaker, and words the medium of a writer or poet. As a creative, my medium is the intermediary between my creative imagination and whoever I’m communicating with.

The third meaning of Medium is a diviner or prophet who communicates with spirits. In this case, the person is the intermediary, sitting in the middle between a spirit and the person listening.

In this context, we can understand media itself as both the connector and the dividing veil between people. In the same way God said “let there be a division between the waters” putting a firmament between heaven and earth, but then using that veil to communicate with his people, my chosen method of communication, my medium or media, sits as a veil or tapestry between ideas and the person receiving them.

Finally, if Media is the “how”, then Content is the “what”, the primary tool of my trade.

CONTENT – “Contents” originates from the early 15th-century Middle English contentes, derived from the Latin contentum (meaning “that which is contained”), the neuter past participle of continēre (“to hold together, enclose”). It stems from com- (“together”) and tenēre (“to hold”), rooted in the PIE root *ten- (“to stretch”). It began to be used to describe digital media because of the text of web pages being called “Contents”. Neil Patel famously said “Content is king” and the phrase “Content marketing quickly picked up steam.

In the age of social media, the terms “Content” and “Creative” got combined into the role of Content Creator.

Content strategy overlaps with, but is distinct from marketing. Marketing focuses on distribution, when the exchanges happen; but content focuses on communication and medium.

A content strategy is all about what you’re trying to communicate and to whom – the medium is the message.

This works hand in hand with marketing, but is far more elusive to measure – content strategy sits in between marketing and management, and in many ways is the intermediary between the two.

This part of the process is often overlooked, or confused and equivicated with marketing strategy. But content strategy should actually come before (or at least work in tandem with) marketing. Marketing presupposes a metric, and therefore, a medium and distribution plan; content strategy is how you understand the best medium and method to get your message to your audience.

In this way, content strategy is first inward focused: What are we trying to communicate, and to whom?

Then it moves outward: Where are the people I’m trying to reach?

Finally, it bridges between the two: What is the best platform and medium to bridge those two connections?

It’s one thing to make a video, a podcast, brochure, or article; it’s another to make two. Once you make three, you need a process.

I’ve created processes for creative teams in many different industries and working in many different mediums. The goal is always the same: How to we reduce friction wherever possible, while maintaining flexibility where needed?

I’ve refined my process for creating processes over my decade long career into its own well oiled machine. This process is how I was able to bring the video output for an eCommerce company up to 10+ videos a week with a two person team; it’s how I was able to build a training video library for a tech startup that contained over 50 videos that required updating several times a year to match patch updates; and it’s how I’ve been able to create systems for lean creative teams that meet asset requests for half a dozen teams and departments on a day to day basis.

Once the strategy is done, the processes are developed, and the day to day continues, that’s where project and content management come into play.

This is very people oriented (understanding and communicating who has what strengths and skill sets, and who has what responsibilities) but also very maintenance oriented (making sure that people stick to the processes; file management, review processes, project execution, and everything in between).

This is where the processes are tested, and we learn when they work and where they may need to be improved.