Creative is the fun of a marketer's job. We're all wannabe art directors at heart, and so inevitably creative is the part of the campaign on which people spend the most time. It's also the most visible, and therefore the component that executives and other powers-that-be tend to evaluate (and critique) the most.

It's also perhaps the least important part of any campaign.

Don't misunderstand me. It's not that creative doesn't matter. But in the big picture, and specifically in terms of what makes the most difference in the success of a direct marketing program, creative always takes a back seat to 1) list and 2) offer.

Before you say "not that old chestnut again", ask yourself: if every marketer already understood that list and offer mattered most, and creative is a distant third, why is it that so many companies, particularly in the technology arena, expend so much brain power and marketing budget on high-concept creative and treat the offer as an afterthought?

The next time your company starts to plan a major demand generation campaign, make sure offer is high on the agenda. Trust me: a compelling call to action will always have more impact than the most wildly successful creative theme. Put another way, you'll get a much higher return from investing in a better offer than you will in a more creative (read: "expensive") campaign.

And there's still plenty of room for creativity. Instead of another tired white paper, develop a custom CD-ROM that compiles content from a variety of sources. Or a "how to" booklet. Or an interactive ROI calculator. If offer isn't a part of the creative process, you'll fall into the inevitable last-minute trap of "OK, the creative's done. Now what do we use as the offer?" It's at this juncture that so many campaigns fail.

So remember: offers can be fun too!