“You Don’t Have to Be a Creative to Be Creative”

“Creativity is not just for advertising or marketing for us, it’s actually the very DNA of how we think about our products and how we solve problems for our customers,” says Oliver Clark, global VP of integrated campaigns, content and social. What many might not know is that Sage is the oldest and biggest UK tech brand on the FTSE 100 (it’s been in business for 40 years) and it didn’t get there by ignoring the power of creativity. For Oliver, the brand’s success and growth is down to two pillars. “We have grown by constantly being creative in the way we develop products for the changing needs of our customers,” he says. At a time when competition in Sage’s category is quickly heating up, “it’s all the more reason for us to be distinctive and to differentiate ourselves,” Oliver says. “Creativity enables us to do that.”

Oliver has always paid attention to the power of a great campaign and a really good ad. “I was an advertising nerd,” he says of his younger self. “I used to collect Boddingtons Brewery ‘The Cream of Manchester’ print ads because I loved the simplicity of thought. I’ve always been attracted to that.” He also grew up during the heyday of Stella Artois’s reign, calling the ‘Reassuringly Expensive’ slogan and campaigns “brilliant advertising and amazing storytelling."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Stella Artois is one of the brands that Oliver worked with before joining Sage, as well as Unilever, Innocent Smoothies, Lloyds Pharmacy, Kia and Magners Cider. “I’ve been lucky to have always worked in creative environments. My background is essentially advertising and then I made the leap to the client side.” The thread connecting his career from past to present day is working with brands “with the aspiration to do something different in their category.” He continues: “Whether that’s in pet food or household goods, categories that don’t typically lend themselves to what we think of as creative. What’s most fun for me is the journey of creating that momentum and that change.”

Seeing the benefits of bringing a creative lens to every aspect of his work and every category he’s worked in, Oliver wanted to inspire his team at Sage to do the same. That’s why he got the whole team to take The Business of Creativity course; led by Sir John Hegarty (creative founder at Saatchi & Saatchi and BBH), the eight-week course aims to equip participants with tangible tools to nurture and apply creativity in business. “I wanted to make sure that everyone was on the same page about the aspiration that we have to do great work,” he explains. “The course was great in giving everyone a common language for how to think and talk about creative work. And it has helped to create that aspiration and to give people confidence discussing creative, judging it, and thinking about it.”

The course helped to create the kind of momentum that Oliver cherishes and a shared starting point for everyone to build on collectively. Creativity in a business setting, for him, isn’t “something one person can just do” but “something everyone needs to have a shared vision for.” In practice, this looks like talking about what ‘great’ looks and feels like in Sage’s category and outside of it. “We look at our competition and we’re open and bold about what they’re getting right and wrong. We encourage everyone to have a subjective opinion and a strategically objective one,” he says. 

“We’re always really challenging ourselves and asking ‘How could we do this differently?’ We have this frame of mind which is always questioning whether there's a different way of approaching the problem rather than the traditional one that we've always taken.” 

Celebrating the successes of the team, of which there are many, is vital and so are (though it sounds counterintuitive) the failures. Why? “Getting great, creative work isn’t easy. So it’s about taking the time to recognise what we maybe didn’t get quite right and why we’d want to do it differently next time. That might be thinking about the brief in a different way or making cultural tweaks for different markets.”

Oliver points out that Sage works in an emotionally charged category. Connected to the brand’s main product—accounting software—are a whole host of psychologies like financial security, life and career aspirations, dreams and goals. “We have to be able to tell that story in a way that really connects emotionally. There’s a real opportunity here for us to be creative in the way we do it while being respectful about the challenges facing people in business."

As a market leader in its category, Sage’s success is “somewhat of a double edged sword,” according to Oliver, particularly in the UK. The brand has to keep refreshing itself in a way that makes it feel relevant to new customers while continuing to appeal to existing ones. That’s a challenge for creativity to solve. “Through our creative work we’re holding onto what’s great about our heritage and building on that distinctiveness in a way that enables new customers to recognise the potential we can offer.”

That’s where The Business of Creativity course has really helped. “While everyone on the team has different perspectives on creativity and is on a different journey with it, the course has inspired confidence in everyone to be able to nurture an idea through a creative mindset. Creating aspiration for creativity is really inspiring for people; it creates a cultural connection because you share ambition as to what you're trying to achieve, which is to go above and beyond the ‘normal’ to make something interesting,” says Oliver. 

It sounds simple, but to empower people to embrace their inherent creativity takes more than lip service. They need to be convinced that it’s possible. But Oliver believes that if there’s one, powerful feeling that his entire team took away from the course it’s that “you don’t have to be a creative to be creative.”

The Business of Creativity spring cohort launches April 29th 2024. Find out more about the course here.