This fall the AIGA (American Institute for Graphic Arts) hosted GAIN 2014: Redesigning Commerce, three days of industry-lead presentations and workshops, focused on the importance of business and design working together in today’s world. Professionals holding both creative and non-creative centered positions gathered to understand how design and business can thrive alongside one another. How does this apply to you as a marketer? Creativity and innovation helps companies differentiate themselves and provide unique value and lasting impact to their customers, something every marketer strives to attain.

Not able to attend this year’s GAIN: Redesigning Commerce? No worries . . .

Here are the top five takeaways for marketers from GAIN: Redesigning Commerce:

1) Innovation ≠ Invention

You don’t have to invent a completely new form of marketing to succeed in your marketing efforts. Today, moreso than invention, innovation is key to creating business value and making an impact. Innovation is about how to add meaning where meaning hasn’t previously existed and use what’s available to create what doesn’t already exist.

In one session at GAIN, Douglas Rushkoff suggested that you seek ideas that demonstrate the elegance and simplicity of a solution. A solution does not necessarily mean complicated and costly. Jon Pittman, VP of corporate strategy for Autodesk, suggested innovators  embrace oddities that arise, explore them, and use it to their advantage. He challenges his students to forget what they were taught about finding and eliminating the outlier in business school. Instead he encouraged us to study them and ask questions like “What is the outlier? Why is it there? What can we learn from it?” This is how innovation is born. In addition, he recommended leveraging current trends to stay focused on what is important to your customer and your your customer needs. Whatever your method for being innovative, get creative in how you provide value to your customer so they remember you.

2) Learn to Love Someone Unfamiliar

Research is a vital step in the marketing process. In order to most effectively help your customer, you must first understand and appreciate what makes them unique. Evolve Collaborative designers, Paul Backett and Chris Butler believe that not only must you understand your customer, but you must also find something about them that you love and use that to drive your work. Part of this is what they call extreme empathy — the flexibility to inhabit the mind of someone dramatically unlike yourself. By uncovering that unique piece of your customer that inspires you and sets them apart from the rest, it is much simpler to find the right solution your customer needs.

3) Marketers Must Be Explorers

In planning your marketing communications, you must look to the future. Be prescriptive of what will be important in the future, Jon Pittman suggested. What will your customer need, want, or find interesting in 2017? Do what you can now to prepare for where your customer will be. Use your company’s strengths (and equally its weaknesses) to come up with the right strategy to approach your customers’ future needs and wants.

4) You Can’t Be Part of the Solution Unless You’re Also Part of the Problem

A willingness to help your customer isn’t enough today. You must completely invest in their issue if you want to provide the best solution.

Douglas Rushkoff believes being part of the problem is a step in being part of the solution. Evolve Collaborative challenges its students to an exercise called “Live The Life” before servicing a new customer. This forces students to actually live the life of their customer and get a complete view of who the students are working to create a solution for. Students use their new customer understanding to create a “360 chart” of the customer journey. This helps them establish who their client is from all sides: What’s their daily routine? Past successes? Biggest weakness? What is their company culture? Who are their allies? What do they want from us?

Be an active participant in your customer’s journey because that's how the real relationships form. By asking more than telling, you can find a piece of your client to motivate you to provide a meaningful solution to their marketing problem.

5) It’s All about Sharing and Playing

After all the time and thought you put into your customer, isn’t it only right they invest in you? Use that as an opportunity to have fun and engage with your customer. Make it fun! In a session, Zach Overton, COO of Product (RED), the organization dedicated to gaining awareness of and fighting AIDS, says his company is an advocate for sharing and letting their customers have a voice. Twitter campaigns by (RED) include posts such as “What is your favorite (RED) product?” where (RED) lovers are encouraged to post their favorite product and why.

Another, “(RED) on Snapchat,” invites people to follow (RED) on Snapchat to win free product. Let your customer be involved in your process and watch them go.

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