3 Lessons in Content Creativity From My Experience Directing a Mad Men Video

"How do you guys think of all your new ideas?!" This is a question I hear a lot from people who consume our content.

The guts of inbound marketing is the content you create, but regularly coming up with new content ideas is not a trivial task. 

My most recent creative content project was a short video called Inbound Marketing: The Movie . It's a fun, dramatic video in "movie trailer" format with a Mad Men theme.

Because it's necessary to be a content-creating machine to be successful at inbound marketing, what can you do to keep your ideas fresh?

Based on what I learned from my latest project, here are my three tips for creating new ideas:

1) Collect fresh talent from folks outside the marketing department. For this video, my actors came from the customer, sales, and marketing teams at HubSpot. Working with folks from other departments on creative projects adds a fresh perspective and showcases new talent. Most likely, creative skills in your company aren't just limited to the individuals with "marketing" in their titles. Give other departments a shot!

2) Brainstorm current trends of mass media. A couple of months ago we released our rendition of " The [Marketing] Office " while the show was in full swing. For the above project, Mad Men was a natural choice. What TV shows are currently popular? Why not incorporate those themes? A Tip: Don't fret over "imitating perfectly." It's better to put effort into your message.

3) Think of new presentation formats for your regular media types. Perhaps you've done a ton of video before, but only in the form of skits, music videos , puppet shows and TV podcasts. Brainstorm entirely different formats for that often-used medium. We'd never created a video trailer before. There's always new ways to use familiar media!

What out-of-the-box video have you done lately? Have you seen any great examples of online video for marketing ?

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