Why Creativity is not a department, agency or function in business Duncan James – Ideation and Innovation Manager, Starcom
Fact: We are all ‘creative’ and have to enable ourselves both in business and communications. communications. We need to unlock the latent creativity Conventional Wisdom: If you want creative thinking in communications or business, apparently apparently you go to ‘Creative department’ (the one with the table footballs in it probably) probably) The Real Issue: Despite continued callings from clients for unified thinking, 360° ideas, media neutral planning, planning, channel planning, planning, the vast majority of clients are relying on ‘creative’ people to deliver the ‘jump in thinking’, in both their communication and their own business. They are not enabling the latent creativity which is in every single person, from each roster agency, not only in this industry but whatever job they do, it is all about ‘time to think’
Being a client . . . Briefing, Briefing, orchestrating orchestrating and evaluating a campaign, campaign, dealing with internal pressures, pressures, developing NPD. There are many demands for new ideas and new approaches, almost to the point of ‘where can the ideas come from’ and ‘who can produce them’? Essentially communication agencies are employed to do something that a client cannot/does not want to do. In the ‘old’ days this meant that ‘Ad agencies’ thought of advertising ideas and made them into mainly TV ads, whilst the media arm bought media at a cheaper cost. Even now, essentially, that is why clients come to us agencies, because to do various services in house would not provide the same effect, in terms of cost or creative output. I believe that clients need creativity from all fronts, including their own staff at the correct time, to gain an idea and rally around it. Creativity is universally acknowledged acknowledged to be the ‘making of unique associations associations and or approaches’. approaches’. It varies within this, but as a broad stroke it is ‘new and novel’ Creativity can be perceived perceived as a bit ‘out there’, a bit beanbags and feet on the table and either ‘I am, or I am not a creative type of person’. Recent experiments have actually shown that far from learning to be creative, we actually un-learn how to be creative (Land and German empirical models of creativity which emphasised emphasised hemispheric hemispheric 2002) which contradicts the old empirical lateralisation lateralisation (the two t wo sides of the brain, with one being ‘more active’ than the other). Some people people are able to be more more creative, yes, that is, to make make unique unique associations, associations, but the main point is that it is possible to enhance creativity in everyone, everyone, to release latent creativity and open up new possibilities possibilities outside the realms of our day to day. The reason this is important to the communication communication industry (and especially brand owners) is that we live and die by ideas, brands are important, and brands are “a collection of intangible intangible thoughts and qualities in the consumers head” (Ries and Trout 1983). At Starcom creativity creativity becomes ‘Ideation’ ‘Ideation’ and is encouraged encouraged not through through a ‘Creative department’, department’, pushing people to ‘be creative’, or by bean bags and post pseudo ironic posters everywhere, everywhere, but by a culture of simple to execute techniques that enable us all to remove our constraints and un learn the rules we have been conditioned to believe, approaching a problem in a new way to find a solution. The right mix of people, the right stimuli and a little open attitude is all that is needed to uncover breakthrough breakthrough ideas, whether this is in brand, communication, communication, NPD or new tools and
processes within a brand owner environment. Creativity can affect everything to some degree, even a new approach to an auditing process. As economies and media landscapes evolve, creativity and uniqueness of brands will increasingly be important, even commoditisation isn’t as easy because you’ll have to outmanoeuvre Easyjet, Tesco Value, or Asda Smartprice. Arguably, commoditisation is now branded. New ideas of what to say are the life blood of all organisations from client to agency, but how to get the message through clutter to empowered consumers has never been as difficult, or important. What we need to do is allocate the time to look up from our journey to where we are going and be empowered, utilising techniques that are inclusively creative, not exclusively the domain one type of person.
In Conclusion Creativity is not the stalwart of any one organisation whether in the communication process or not. Creativity is great, big ideas, more often through enablement of many not reliance on a few. Creativity can and must be enabled to thrive in the future, both in terms of brand values, communication cut through and importantly the bottom line.
