Episode 218 / Svetla Pavlova / Epsilon / Performance Marketing Manager
Fostering Creative Thinking for Marketing Effectiveness
Svetla Pavlova is the Performance Marketing Manager at Epsilon, while also studying for her MBA. She’s discovering new tools to enhance creative effectiveness in marketing and advertising, and her Shiny New Object therefore is “fostering creative thinking.” This can boost a brand’s marketing and introduce valuable new perspectives in how business is conducted.
Svetla’s marketing career has evolved over a dozen years, starting with the finance industry, moving into the startup world, then landing at Epsilon. Her role there runs in parallel with her MBA studies in strategic innovation.
Her top marketing tip is to always know your product or service. Who does it serve? What pain points does it address? This can lead to more meaningful conversations and creative output towards consumers. It also increases the creative effectiveness of your work.
Svetla’s shiny new object is fostering creative thinking. She’s developed an interest for this during her MBA and specifically a course that’s opened her eyes to the fact that creativity is not limited to artists. It can be cultivated by anyone as long as they employ a structure that guides them through it.
The PAGES framework is what she suggests using to guide you through the creative process. PAGES stands for Place, Attributes, Geography/Environment, Elements, and Self-concept. By altering these criteria, marketers can shift their perspective and approach, leading to fresh insights and ideas. Svetla provided an example where the framework was applied to a case study involving the pitch for keeping a child care unit open at a hospital.
While she’s not yet applied the PAGES structure into her everyday work, Svetla sees it as giving two important elements to marketers looking to be more creative: structure / process and confidence. In her experience, the lack of a defined process and the newness of using creativity to solve business problems is what puts companies off doing so. However, showing that a clear process exists will make leaders more confident in this approach. The same goes for confidence: trying the PAGES framework will show, in time, that coming up with creative solutions can work.
Listen to more details on employing the PAGES approach to creative thinking and hear Svetla’s top tips for students looking to get into the industry, on the latest episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Svetla Pavlova 0:00
Know what you're marketing. A lot of times marketers are setting up the campaigns and launching all of these great things but know what you're marketing: know how it works, know what the product is, how it alleviates pain points for your customers. That knowledge will get your foot in the door for many conversations peripheral to your role.
Tom Ollerton 0:28
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative, we are a creative effectiveness ad tech platform. But today we're doing a podcast and I am on a call with Svetla Pavlova, who is performance marketing manager at Epsilon. So we're going to be talking to Svetla about her journal and her vision for the future of the industry. And what is her shiny new object? So svetla? For anyone who doesn't know who you are what you do, can you give us a bit of background?
Svetla Pavlova 1:16
Sure. Hi, Tom. First, thanks so much for having me on. I'm super excited to have this conversation. A little bit about me, I am in the marketing department here at Epsilon. But I've been in marketing for over a dozen, now, more than a decade, I guess, close to a dozen years. But I've been in various departments within the marketing area. And currently in an MBA program studying strategic innovation, which is going to lead us into our conversation on fostering creative thinking today.
Tom Ollerton 1:47
Can you tell me a few of the roles that you did before Epsilon to put you in this demand gen position?
Svetla Pavlova 1:53
Sure. I started off working in the finance industry at Northwestern Mutual and doing a lot of the branding work for our top advisors, and then moved into a startup, which was where I really got my feet wet in having a lot of responsibility for the corporate goals in the business. And the business at that time was called Threekit. And they did 3d and augmented reality. And I worked closely with our product marketing director and was responsible for our email strategy along with our social media strategy, field events. And I just had this huge umbrella. It was a small marketing team, so but I had a huge umbrella of responsibilities under it. And from that experience, I was able to land a job at Epsilon, which is a very great company. They do media advertising services, and have a long history of, of digital media service services and other tools for b2b companies.
Tom Ollerton 3:03
What advice would you give to someone who's trying to recreate your career or trying to break into the industry then mercy, one of our students interested in doing all the right doing all the basics? What advice would you give them to get going and succeed?
Svetla Pavlova 3:17
Yeah, I would say if you're interested in getting your feet wet, in the industry, you probably have some experience in a part of the marketing sector, I would call it and when you know what that is, when you know what you know, you own it, and you drive it. For example, if you know how to set up a social media campaign, okay, just own that, enter, enter the industry, knowing that you know something, and really, truly own it, be accountable for it, you might not know everything, but you'll learn along the way and you have something to anchor back on. So whatever it is that you have a little bit of experience. And I would really hold on to that and try to move it forward in your organization or your personal business.
Tom Ollerton 4:04
And in terms of kind of straight up Marketing Tip. Tip that you find yourself sharing most often what is that one bit of advice that you think is a real silver bullet that stood you in good stead?
Svetla Pavlova 4:16
I would say know what you're marketing. I know it sounds funny, or like maybe like, oh, yeah, I okay, but I come across a lot of times, marketers are setting up the campaigns and launching all of these great things, but know what you're marketing. Know how it works, know what the product is, how it you know, alleviates pain points for your customers. And that'll get you. I think that that knowledge will get your foot in the door of many conversations peripheral to your role.
Tom Ollerton 4:49
So why do you think people make that mistake?
Svetla Pavlova 4:51
I think they're just focused on the day to day, on the on the hands to keyboard, on launching, on the setup, on the launch, on the implementation. But if you take a step back and really look at the work that you're doing, and if you have that, oh, this is how it works, this is why someone would actually want to buy it, you can make better decisions on how to set up those campaigns, how to launch the campaigns, how to analyze the results, post the campaign.
Tom Ollerton 5:17
So we're now going to talk about your shiny new object, which is fostering creative thinking. So I'm curious to know why that's a shiny new object and where this has come from, and how marketers could essentially take advantage of fostering creative thinking in a new way.
Svetla Pavlova 5:17
Yes, I'm so excited about this, because I am in this fostering creative thinking class, it just ended at my MBA program. And when I initially went into the class, I was like, Okay, this is going to be interesting in in regards of like, what is what, why are we learning about creativity in a management program. And by the end of the class, I had such an appreciation of how creativity can really help build new ideas in a business setting. And I do want to give out just a really quick shout out to my professors, because a lot of the things that I'm going to be talking about they have, you know, been teaching us in the class. So it's Professor Lowenstein and Goncalo and Professor Mehta and Jennifer Mueller, specifically, but this class really changed my perspective, and a lot of what a lot of this new knowledge is about changing your perspective. It's I think a lot of people think of creativity as artists, as people that naturally have this ability to be creative and take ideas and generate new ideas. But it really is not that it really can be done by anybody. There can be a process, there is a framework. And it's, it's a roadmap to the creative process, that I think a lot of business or business in general thinks that you need a specific individual to do this. But it really can be a department, it can be a team. And again, it can be a process that can be managed.
Tom Ollerton 7:22
Right. I need to know what this process is, because I interviewed a guy, it was literally four years ago on this podcast. And he said the same thing. He had a process for defining, sorry, for improving your creative output by adding it all through Excel. I'm gonna dig it out, but tell me what is this process that listeners to this podcast can use?
Svetla Pavlova 7:46
So there, there's this framework, it's called PAGES. And the pages are, the P stands for place. The ad stands for attributes, G, geography, or environment. E is the elements. And then S is I think, self concept. So there's five different criteria of the pages framework, and you can change them. And you can change individual parts of it, or you can change all of them. But I guess it also starts of like, going back to the reason of why you want to go into the creative process. A big one for businesses is that you've hit an impasse. So for example, I have a few examples, because I think storytelling is is a big part of explaining how this works. So Burt's Bees, I hope that you know, Tom what Burt's Bees is, it's a pretty household brand in the US based on chapstick.
Tom Ollerton 8:54
Yeah, very familiar where we've worked automated creative, I've worked with first piece in the cast. So yes, incredibly familiar.
Svetla Pavlova 9:01
Oh, okay, great. So Burt's Bees, so Burt actually wanted, he started off his company selling candles. That was the biggest part of his business. And he also had lip balm as an add on to the candle. And what he saw was that the candles weren't selling as much as the lip balm. So he had a lot of early years of frustration he you know, he was quoted he hit kind of like a rock bottom. So essentially, he hit an impasse and so we talk a lot about this and in fostering creating creative thinking is when you hit an impasse you have to change the way that you're doing things if you're if you're willing to take those next steps. And so what he realized, what his insight was, and this word insight is very, we're gonna be probably I'm probably gonna mention it a few times here. An insight is when you change your current perspective, based on some some new knowledge so his new knowledge was okay. Lip Balm is actually beginning to generate greater sales than the candles. So with that insight, I'm going to be redirecting or reorganizing the business model to really focus on selling the lip balms. So he hit an impasse, he had an insight, and he changed his perspective. And that's part of that's, that's an example of the creative process in the works.
Tom Ollerton 10:31
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Tom Ollerton 11:08
And so when you're getting PAGES to work, is it gonna work instantly? Or do you do different elements over time? Can you... you gave me the Burt's Bees example. But could you give me one of your own examples where you've used it successfully?
Svetla Pavlova 11:19
Sure, sure. I'll give you an example of one of the assignments, one of our first... I haven't. So again, this, this class just ended. So I'm excited to like take this learning and actually implement it in real life. But one of the assignments that I really struggled with in the beginning of this class is we were given a case study where a woman had to... was being... she was a nurse at a hospital. And she was being told that she needs to shut down the child care unit because of financial reasons. And she has to, she wanted to go against the board and present them with a pitch on why they should not do this. And I was asked to provide 10 ideas of how to pitch this new direction to the board. And 10 ideas is a lot of ideas, I could probably do you know, like, three, three ideas off the bat. But then once you start, like hitting your... hitting your limit, it's hard to generate ideas. So that PAGES framework helps you reposition your thinking maybe in a perspective of the board. Why, you know, I'm looking at it from the perspective of the nurse, which is the, what was it the P I guess in this case, it could be a person or a place. So we're going to be changing the P, we might also change the environment in which we pitch the presentation, maybe it's actually in the Child Care Unit while it's still open? And not, you know, office setting so they can you know, feel the environment. What else did we do? We could also say that we can pitch it from the perspective of the mothers, or the family that's coming in. And they're realizing that there's no longer a child care unit. So that's an example of how you can change the aspects of PAGES. And like, and also the self concept, like why is this important for me? Why is it important for the nurse, is there I mean, we could completely flip it, you know, on its head and say, Hey, maybe, maybe we'll do something where we close it down for three months, see how it works. And then if it's not, you know, if we still need that the child care unit will open it back up. And so it's all these, it's just changing parts of your thinking parts of your perspective to formulate new ideas that might not come as naturally or right off the bat as in the beginning.
Tom Ollerton 14:03
So it's designed as a tool for people who don't see themselves as creative. They can use a process to just, like force them through a creative process without them...
Svetla Pavlova 14:13
Yes
Tom Ollerton 14:13
... perceiving themselves as a mustache twirling creative person.
Svetla Pavlova 14:18
Exactly, exactly.
Tom Ollerton 14:20
I mean, so what are the limitations of this process? Or is it just so new to you that you're... it's so new and shiny to you that you haven't tried it in the real world yet?
Svetla Pavlova 14:28
I think some limitations. You know, it could be lack of confidence. A lot of limitations when you're pitching something like this, or maybe you've gone through the creative process and you have all of these ideas, and maybe you land on one that you really find sticky. There's a limitation on how it's going to be perceived to the other person. And that I think is what businesses really are challenged with is to be open to a creative idea that doesn't necessarily have the results on hand that maybe previous historical processes have, and they're known and they're established and you know, there, it's comfortable to go with something that you know, with, whereas a creative pitch, once you have it might not be seen as something that's something that's going to be successful, and it might not be. And that's, and that's, I guess, like, I guess that's more on the second part of the creativity is when you're actually pitching it. But I think what you're asking is more on the limits of the framework, which I mean, it's a process and it takes time, it's not some... and even if that idea like you, okay, you generate an insight, you put together your idea, that idea is not maybe not going to work, it's maybe going to take 15 different ideas, 15 different insights. It's, it's not a, so that's the limit of it, it's, um, it's part of like that tenuous. The tenuous aspects of formulating these creative, creative ideas that haven't been analyzed or haven't been, they don't have historical performance to go back to.
Tom Ollerton 16:30
The thing you said that really struck me and reminds me of my own experiences in being comfortable and confidence, and I used to write songs a long time ago, and I found that was the key combination, that if you're uncomfortable, and you weren't confident, then you couldn't allow yourself to be creative. And I think what this... the kind of structure, PAGES structure really does, it kind of facilitates both those things, you're comfortable because you're in a process and you're confident, like not all eyes on you, you're just following the process. So it removes your kind of internal critic, and puts you in a position where you could come up with ideas. And I think it's interesting, what you say is that, yeah, it could take 10 could take 15, you can have to repeat that process all over again. But at least you have a tool, you have a function, absolutely, you can go at. And for the majority of people, I don't think people consider themselves as creative. And I see a lot of people create creative people saying that that's not true. When you get dressed, you're creative, when you cook, you're creative. When you interact with your children, you're creative. So I stand by that view. But I think what you've shared here is something I've never heard of. And I'm really grateful for you sharing that structure with the audience. But we have to leave it there, unfortunately. So if anyone wants to get in touch with you about this process, or your experience on the job at epsilon work, how can they do that? And what makes a really good outreach to you?
Svetla Pavlova 17:48
Oh, sure, they can find me on LinkedIn. They can also send me an email, my work email, svetla.pavlova@epsilon.com
Tom Ollerton 17:56
Svetla, thank you so much for your time.
Svetla Pavlova 17:58
Thank you, Tom.
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