Are digital marketers creative and artistic? Do they qualify for O-1B Visas?

Digital marketing is a fairly new field in the sense that it's only been around since the advent of the Internet. When many people think about the internet, they may think about coding, computer programming, IT, or other professions. Although understanding and utilizing the internet is part of digital marketing, it is not the only relevant aspect of the field. Digital marketing focuses on bringing in new business and building brand awareness, however, most choose to ignore the creative process of digital marketing. Before we do that, we have to deconstruct what digital marketing actually is.

Asking others about digital marketing may lead you to different answers and sub answers. For our purposes, we're going to break down digital marketing into three different subgroups: email marketing, social media management, and data analytics.

Email Marketing

Email marketing includes choosing the right text and using persuasive language in your drafting process. Email marketing also includes using graphics and incorporating them into the design of the email. The email has to be hand-tailored to a specific audience in order to be successful. The architecture and the creation of the different copy and graphics associated with the email is creative. As a digital marketer, one must pick creative and engaging language. This language must entice and influence someone to open or engage with the email. Crafting language and images is part of the creative process.

Social Media Management

Another aspect of digital marketing is social media management. Social media management includes the construction of a post that's going to be placed on a social media platform. For example, it could be the manipulation of a photo, the architecture of witty text, and/or including captivating captions. All this is creative because you're using creative strategy to facilitate the design of the final post. This process includes being an effective writer and constitutes a creative endeavor. Even if you don't believe that digital marketing is creative, think about everything that goes into it, think about the writing, think about the copy and the text.

Writers are commonly filed under O-1B because we recognize the creative nature of writing books, articles, etc. Why wouldn't that process or that creativity be implemented in the copy or the drafting of the text for social media posts? These are things that I focus on and by deconstructing the process, we can understand the creativity that goes into Digital Marketing.

Now we see that drafting a post or beginning an email campaign is all part of the creative process. With email marketing, we focus on the design, we focus on the layout, we focus on the creative nature of the writing. With a social media post; we focus on the editing of the images, the composition of the image, and the creation of creative copy.

Many digital marketers use social media and email marketing but let’s look at an example of a client, who was not creating posts or creating marketing material.

Data Analytics

My client was involved in gathering data, creating graphs, and providing marketing strategies to brands. His company would use the data he collected to effectively develop a marketing campaign.

He would use data gathered from market research and create a graph based on the data. You may be thinking, “A graph, that's math, that's not creative!” You put data into a graph to basically understand where all the information is coming from, and how to properly organize the information. So a graph is basically the organization or the visual component of information that's been analyzed, utilizing that information, and reporting the data.

Let’s say, for example, he would have a meeting with Puma, present the data, and present the graph. He would report that the best campaign to craft at this moment is for people who live in Manhattan, who like black sneakers, and report the best demographics to target. By using this data, he was able to influence or create information that brands were utilizing to create their campaigns. So while my client was not actively creating the campaign, he presented data that would influence the creativity of copywriters and designers involved in the campaign.

This case was filed under O-1B and was approved with no premium processing during the height of the pandemic. What we were able to do with this client's case ultimately focused on the end result of his work. The end result of his work was to influence creative campaigns. Therefore, his work created the structure for a brand’s campaign.

Although the first part of his work was business oriented, the whole development of the campaign was structured around his unique knowledge and data.

These are very different examples of how digital marketing can be utilized and filed under O-1B. Digital marketers all directly or indirectly influence the creative process and engage in a creative process.