Marketing Creativity and Innovation

Individual Assessment (75%)

Successful implementation of marketing strategies in a dynamic and competitive marketplace requires companies to utilise creativity and innovation. Design Thinking is an approach to problem solving that fosters the creative process of generating solutions.

As the marketing director at a consultancy company, you develop creative marketing solutions for businesses. You have recently been approached by a start-up company to advise them on their new project: TimeTool, an app they developed. The app is aimed at enhancing the experience of students by supporting their self-organisation and decision-making process. More specifically, it assists students in time management by recording and analysing data to help them achieve their best. The company’s market research revealed that there is potential for the app amongst the target market of students however they struggle to achieve the desired number of subscribers to the service.

You need to come up with potential solutions to the company’s problem by applying design thinking. You should cover the below points as a minimum, however you are not limited to, in providing the company solutions:

• How would you introduce design thinking to the start-up and explain its relation to creativity and innovation? Use examples to support your arguments by reflecting on your creative team experience.
• Apply design thinking to offer solutions for the start-up company’s app. Develop your persona(s) and user journey map, identify the problem(s), ideate and test. Implement user insights into your discussion.
• How would you measure the performance of your creative problem solving and the impact of the solutions you suggest for TimeTool? You may use examples to support your arguments in demonstrating the effectiveness of your approach to problem solving.

Write a report for the start-up explaining your approach to their problem, discuss how you applied design thinking and justify your solutions. You are expected to explicitly indicate your knowledge and understanding of creativity and innovation by applying your learning and theoretical understanding of the concepts covered in this module. To do this, you need to make sure you have engaged with the module materials as well as external research and readings. To demonstrate your points and support your arguments you can also refer to your experience of working in a creative team. Therefore, using examples of your experience is highly encouraged.

This assessment is in the form of a written essay, up to 2,500 words, worth 75% of your overall mark. Below are the criteria against which your assignment will be marked.

Marking Criteria