creative

Creative thinking and the joy of process

Creative thinking and the joy of process

THE BALANCE BETWEEN ART VS TECHNIQUE

'Over the years, Jeffries has either outlasted, sued, or crushed any competitor in the field of pick-up to make his school, Speed Seduction, the dominant model for getting a woman's lips to touch a man's – that is, until Mystery came along and started teaching workshops.'

Neil Strauss (2005), The Game

The Game is an exposé of an international community of pick-up artists who refined their talents for seduction by following a set of procedures. Is it 100% true? Who knows, but they estimate that 90% of success with women can be put down to technique and process. Strauss infiltrates the community and learns Jeffries' NLP techniques and a man named Mystery's process, claimed to be built on reverse engineering of human behaviour. We can debate the morals of this community, but it did apparently create a global workshop business training the method of being a successful PUA (pick-up artist)!

What is our response to the idea that seduction is not an art of finesse, emotion and magic, but just a process that can be learned and actioned?

  • Relief? 'Finally, I know how to do it!'
  • Curiosity? 'I'll give it a try – it might work!'
  • Anger? 'Don't spill the secrets!'
  • Scepticism? 'It's not as simple as that!'
  • Disappointment? 'Where's the magic gone in life!'
  • Scorn? 'People are making money by doing this!'

And so on. It seems to me that we have a similar love–hate relationship with the use of process for enhancing creative thinking in planning brands and their communications. We are constantly dealing with an underlying conflict regarding how best to generate ideas, assess and apply them.

The proposition here is that more and better process, applied with intelligence, sensitivity and discretion can lead to better ideas more often, with easier buy-in and more effective implementation.

In this article, the terms 'creativity' and 'creative' are used in their broad sense to apply to everyone working in the business of producing and executing ideas for commercial purposes – not just the conventional creative team of copywriter and art director.

BEYOND MAGIC

'Scientific understanding of creativity is far from complete, but one lesson already seems plain: originality is not a gift doled out sparingly by the gods. We can call it up from within, through training and encouragement.'

Scientific American MIND, May 2005 We can identify five broad approaches to creativity.

1. Divine Inspiration

Creativity comes from God, and we are empty vessels waiting to be filled so we can make the creative leap, as noted in Jamming: the art and discipline of corporate creativity, by John Kao, 'Traditionally, creativity has been viewed as a happy accident, no more manageable than running around with a bottle trying to capture lightning.'

2. Personality Traits and Natural Abilities

Creativity is more likely to occur when traits are configured in a particular way within the individual. Various tests have been developed to measure creativity through psycho-metrics, personality and cognitive-affective behaviour by Paul Torrance, Michael Kirton, Teresa Amabile and others.

3. State of Mind

Internal factors such as energy level, mood and the ability to focus influence the ability to create. Different states are better for different activities.

4. Socio-dynamic Context

External social and environmental factors surrounding the individuals can enable or inhibit their creativity. These include physical space, noise, light, company culture and politics.

5. Tools and Techniques

The use of processes to encourage idea generation and assessment. Some are enablers to manage the approaches above; others are specific exercises and activities to improve creative problem solving.

All of these approaches are important and simultaneous; it is not a matter of one being better than another. The question is, how often do we actively select and apply them in the way we work? In the way we develop people and work in teams? Do we create the best possible chances to find the best solutions and then properly implement them? How might we do it better?

BRAND PLANNING: STRATEGY AS THE FIRST CREATIVE ACT

As Chris Anderson put it in his recent book The Long Tail, 'The era of one-size-fits-all is ending, and in place is something new, a market of multitudes.' Consequently, we need to reach multiple audiences across a range of channels, with messages that are as tightly targeted as possible.

To get the best chance of success and synergy, to build positive relationships with as many consumers as possible, it is more important than ever to be absolutely sure about where we are taking the brand. Developing, disseminating and implementing an agreed brand structure is crucial. And it is an art, a creative act, as we've acknowledged for over 30 years:

'Devising the right strategy is in its own way as creative a process as devising an ad.'

Alan Hedges (1974), Testing to Destruction

But in this industry it isn't always the case.

How far do we:

  • actively recognise that strategy as a creative act?
  • consciously apply appropriate processes of creative thinking to devise the brand future?
  • help everyone in the organisation to understand and buy into the brand model?
  • successfully implement the brand throughout the organisation?

If you answer 'always' then read no further. But if you answer 'sometimes', 'with some people', 'not as well as we might' (or even 'never'!), then a review of the processes currently used to develop brand strategy may be helpful.

A TIMELESS MODEL FOR DEVELOPING IDEAS

In 1926 Graham Wallas published his model on the phases of development of ideas: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification.

When I first discovered this model, it was a mystery to me why I hadn't been told about it on my first day in advertising. We should be educating our people in how to develop ideas.

There are a lot of people in our business who are using up enormous amounts of their expensive time and energy trying to generate ideas drawing solely on their own internal resources and instinct. Because we hire educated and intelligent people, we tend to get away with it, but at what cost? Are we really helping to bring out the creativity in everyone in order to solve problems more effectively?

Jaspar Shelbourne and Merry Baskin do a great job of putting the Wallas model into everyday language (in How to Plan Advertising, 1997):

  • 'Gather your information; “feed your head” digest what you have gathered; look from different angles
  • Drop the subject
  • Out of nowhere, the idea will appear
  • Take the idea out into the cold grey dawn of reality and re-examine it.'

But as they say, there is a fat chance that this process is dutifully and regularly applied in the recommended manner. In 1965 JWT's James Webb Young's A Technique for Producing Ideas was first published – so has also been around a while. He too supports the value of process in finding creative ideas, as Bill Bernbach says in the Foreword:

'The quality of the ideas you get cannot be guaranteed, and James Webb Young would, I am sure, be the first one to tell you this. That quality would be the result of all the forces in your life that have played on you, including your genes. But you will be making the most of those forces and all your natural equipment if you follow the procedures he outlines so simply and lucidly.'

In these days of time and resource constraint, a backbone of solid process that then allows personality, talent, experience and the occasional act of God to work their creativity is self-evidently more efficient.

Preparation: Loading up the Brain

'Preparation' is often abused for fear of losing time, yet this short-cutting inhibits the part of the process that can feed the identification of better solutions. How I lament the demise of the brand book when every team member had the current metrics of the market readily to-hand to set the scene as they commence the thinking journey.

Some young marketing executives recently said to me that they knew they ought to read more magazines and watch more TV programmes favoured by their target audience, but they could not do this in the workplace. They had tried, but felt too guilty when other people saw them doing this as they would think that they weren't working.

Peer pressure inhibiting a vital element of preparation – what else is being cut out and why? If the canvas of preparation is too narrow in the first place, it will restrict the options of possibility that might be generated. The point is that this can be actively managed with checklists, guidance, permission and encouragement.

Inadequate preparation can also lead to the wild goose chase. In the rush to make, or be seen to be making, progress, the team set off in their search for the creative solution without properly identifying and understanding the problem that needs to be solved.

There are tried and tested processes for setting up, interrogating and clarifying the problem statement. Without the processes in place, this will not necessarily happen; a waste of time and energy – and utterly demotivating when you find out you are working on the wrong brief.

Incubation: Let's Sleep on it

Incubation is also abused in our business, both in terms of idea generation and idea assessment. We brief a team and then ask 'What are your immediate ideas?' Sure, there will be some; after all, our business is ideas and the people we hire will have both natural ability and experience to quickly respond.

But time is needed for the assimilation of information, the connection of thoughts, letting the unconscious take over and explore possibilities. Sometimes, in being forced to produce ideas too soon, the creative process will be shut down early and the best ideas will never emerge. When people say 'I'm not ready to talk yet', this is often what they mean. We have had knowledge on how the brain works for decades, yet we don't always apply that understanding.

Doing something completely different for a while having 'loaded' the issue into the mind is productive. That's why advertising agencies have always had games tables, but there seem to be less around these days. Whenever I see that the snooker, table tennis or table football machine has been removed ('This is an office, we want people to be working') I suggest it is put straight back in again: aid incubation, and free the inner child of creativity.

Illumination: The Eureka Moment

Ideas rarely arrive exactly on time, especially the best ones – sometimes we despair that they will ever arrive at all, so we must be ready for them when they flash into our conscious mind.

Some years ago I spent a week on a 'thinking expedition' with Rolf Smith, founder of the first US Air Force Innovation Center. Feeling like boy scouts, we filled the pockets of our regulation, rather smart denim waistcoats with blue slips of paper, about the size of Post-it notes, on which we were told to write down all our observations and ideas on the daily task, without judgement, as they occurred to us. The next morning, having incubated, we reviewed the blue slips, looking for possibilities for solving the problem. The best ones seemed to leap off the table after a night's sleep. At the end of the programme, one guy raised his hand and asked where he could buy the blue slips. It was powerful stuff; fine process.

One of the most valuable business gifts I have received was from a Guinness sales director in Malaysia. It is a biro that incorporates a torch in the point, for writing in the dark. What better tool for the moment of illumination, which so often occurs in the middle of the night! And no, we often don't remember it in the morning ...

Verification: Doing the Right thing

Now we give full form to the new idea to make sure it works. We judge it and ensure it is fit for purpose, using both intuition and rational assessment. First we might present ideas to each other.

Presenters vary in their ability to get their ideas over, but the greater 'noise factor' is in the process of receiving and responding to the story. Not only do the ideas need to be understood and evaluated against a host of business and effectiveness criteria, but the 'client' will also be managing his or her response through complex filters – for example, fit with corporate culture, the likely implications of being seen to support such an idea, and their own vested interest. Is the process being managed with this in mind?

Sometimes an illumination isn't one after all. We are under great pressure to identify insights these days – 'insight' seems to be a word that has taken on a life of its own. It can be that what we thought was an insight, when examined properly in the verification phase is a valid learning, but not really worthy of the 'I-word'. On what basis do we agree in advance how we will assess if there is an insight or not? I am reminded of the famous quotation:

'At the heart of an effective creative philosophy is the belief that nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his actions, even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him. For if you know these things about [a] man you can touch him at the core of his being.'

Bill Bernbach (1980), AAAA How many times have you sat in a meeting as ideas are presented to you and everyone sits there watching, waiting for a response? It is simply not possible to receive ideas, process them, realise our response and then verbalise it to others in a moment. Again, we need to incubate, and it can take great presence of mind to create that opportunity – unless the process has already been established. (I don't count making the most junior person on the team respond first as good process!) We wonder why immediate responses seem inane, critical and disrespectful of all the work that went into creating them, with comments at the level of 'I don't think I like the blue dress.'

It is very difficult when the receiver's head feels like it is spinning with possibilities – good or bad – to say something meaningful and useful. We must actively manage the process and help by agreeing evaluation criteria in advance and taking breaks so the brain can do its work.

CONCLUSION

Creative thinking, like seduction, is an art. We do not seek to create working robots who simply follow the rules, but there needs to be a backbone of known procedures and processes. They are the 'how' helping us to deliver the 'what'; creating the conditions to facilitate and encourage ideas. Then it is quite possible that there'll be more strokes of magic and captured lightning.

MORE EFFICIENT TEAMWORK

Divergent vs Convergent Thinking

Divergent thinking is about quantity; it is the generation of lots of ideas, crucially, without judgement. Convergent thinking is about making sense of the mess of ideas from the divergent phase (Osborn 1979). Screeners should be developed and agreed prior to evaluation; the ideas taken forward must be consistent with the overall objectives, without killing ideas just because they are early seeds of possibility.

If everyone is clear that the agenda is divergence, there is a greater likelihood that the team will listen to each other's ideas and build on them to elicit all possibilities. Then, together, they can move on to convergence: assess, judge and decide. A wealth of tools now exist to aid both phases of thinking – we can utilise processes that are much more effective than simply telling people to 'think outside the box' or 'make your recommendations now'.

Understand your Team's Skills

Introverts can often have a tough time getting their ideas heard in our business, which tends to be dominated by extroverts. The extroverts get more and more energised working in meetings and the introverts just want to get some peace and quiet to think! Do you know the composition of your team? Are you using processes to help both introverts and extroverts contribute to their best potential in both divergent and convergent phases? Or is resource being wasted?

Don't be Limited by the 'Brand Model'

The existence of a brand model as the modus operandi in an organisation can lead to short-cutting as people try to avoid divergent thinking and the proper exploration of possibilities. It can seem far quicker to just fill in the boxes. 'Phew, I've filled it all in; now I can get on with my real work of briefing the sales promotion'. It's similar to the PowerPoint syndrome, which can massively limit thinking:

'Whenever I see people in my own office struggling on their PCs over a pitch, I always notice the same thing – they're trying to write the pitch straight onto PowerPoint slides. It's a bit like trying to paint a picture and get it framed at the same time.'

Roger Mavity & Stephen Bayley (2007), Life's a Pitch (Book One)

THE 'GALLERY' TECHNIQUE

I learned a lot from Rena Bartos, ex-JWT New York planner and researcher, about understanding the changing role of women. But she also gave me a great tool, which I use regularly when teams get stuck: the Gallery Technique. We had lunch near Waterloo one day, and my state of mind could best be described as chaotic, with two new business pitches, a heavy regular workload and questions coming from seemingly everyone who knew me. 'If I were you, Linda,' she said, 'I'd spend the afternoon at the Hayward.' With some scepticism, I went for an hour, and it was my table football. Soon I was back in the office in a positive, energised state, issues incubated and ready to rapidly handle all problems. What will you say if your people want to use the Gallery Technique tomorrow?

A DOZEN DOS AND DON'TS

  • Do ensure your problem/challenge is appropriately defined
  • Do actively separate divergent and convergent thinking sessions
  • Do have clear evaluation criteria agreed before assessing candidate ideas
  • Do understand the personalities of team members and create an environment for all to contribute at their best
  • Do have a toolbox of techniques to help if needed
  • Do write down ideas as they occur
  • Do train people on how to think effectively
  • Do respect the importance of time for incubation in idea generation
  • Don't expect the perfectly considered response moments after presenting new ideas
  • Don't expect to find new ideas when everyone is tired or stressed
  • Don't just fill in the boxes of a brand model without a full process of exploring possibilities
  • Don't look disparagingly at colleagues who are trying out target audience activities

This article featured in Market Leader, Summer 2007.

REFERENCES

Anderson, C. (2006) The Long Tail, Random House.

Hedges, A. (1974) Testing to Destruction, Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.

Kao, J. (1996) Jamming: the art and discipline of corporate creativity, Collins.

Mavity, R. & Bayley, S. (2007) Life's a Pitch, Bantam Press.

Osborn, A. F. (1979) Applied Imagination, Macmillan

Kraft, U. (2005) 'Unleashing Creativity' Scientific American Mind, April.

Strauss, N. (2005) The Game: penetrating the secret society of pick up artists, Regan Books.

Shelbourne, J. & Baskin, M. (1997) How to Plan Advertising, Cassell.

Webb Young, J. (1965) A Technique for Producing Ideas, McGraw-Hill.


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