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Google + has a great marketing team. They know how to generate excitement and hype about their product and services. Google should be good at this though; they're Google. However, is Google+ all it's cracked up to be? After all, Facebook is an enormous platform with several different ways to market yourself and is integrated into (nearly) every website on the internet. It's got automation, tools, a developer's only area and hundreds of affiliates all ready and waiting to help you connect. It's a great idea, one that Mark Zuckerberg will be laughing all the way to the bank with.

The question is: Did the world need another social media platform? Especially one that isn't easily integrated, isn't automated and has no API? Granted, they did do some things right, but they fell far short in other ways. And in some ways, they've directly copied what Facebook already does so well. What does this teach the creative community about creativity? A lot actually.

• Don't Copy What Already Exists

  Build upon it. Facebook is a mega-giant in the social media realm, and Google is a giant in the Search Engine Realm. Two very different ways of thinking about society, interaction and end-user satisfaction. Designers need to think about those very things every single time they design something new, whether it's graphic design, advertising or website design. And what shouldn't be done is looking at what people are doing and doing the same thing. Google did add some things in, but not much. There was no innovation once the product got into user's hands. It's difficult to use sometimes, you have to manually update it and, personally, I don't really feel like figuring out a whole new tool if I already have one that works just fine. The bottom line is innovation over imitation.

• Be Prepared to Deliver

  Google really did have a great marketing team on their side: the hype about Google+ was amazing and the growth, once it was released, was even more amazing. The internet was alive with Google+ blog posts and shock at how quickly they were gaining users. But, when people started to figure out that Google+ was a little hard to use in it's early stages, and wasn't nearly as built out as Facebook, those amazing numbers started to dwindle quickly. This teaches us that we need to deliver on our promises of top notch design, amazing results and our great communication and research skills. If you can't deliver what you've promised on, think again about saying you can do it.

• Make It Pop!

  We in the design world hate that word 'pop'. But what our clients are really trying to tell us is that it needs something more than what they've already seen everywhere else. And when you're debuting a new website with huge (perhaps) potential, and you don't give pages a new look...what good is it? Technorati said it best: Woopie Ding Dong.

So when you start your next creative project, whether it's advertising, a brochure, or even a website, don't look at what everybody else is doing and copy it. Enhance it, yes; Do the same thing; absolutely not.

Need a quote on design that isn't copied? Let us know!