Creativity Central [Marty Baker]

Perhaps it’s a literary myth, but it’s a good one.  Hemingway was once challenged to write a whole novel in just six words.  His novel: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Larry Smith, founder of SMITH Magazine turned this idea in the “Six-Word” Memoir. Here are a few samples from his website:

Age not a protection against heartbreak.

Love at first sight; optical illusion.

Hi: The start of all friendships.

Stephen Colbert added his six-word memoir: “Well, I thought it was funny.”

Bachelor party. YouTube Video. Wedding cancelled.

Six words invites simplicity and sometimes delivers profundity.  One of the warm up exercises I do in an Inotivity seminar is for participants  to write a six word solution or description of a situation.  Spend just six minutes.  Then stop.  Move on.

Here are some random ones:

Twice the flavor. Half the fat.

Beauty fades.  We renew it daily.

Arby’s: Because fresh never gets old.

Stretch Zone: Strength begins with flexibility.

Parents gave me life. Thank you.

The hardest job you’ll ever love.

Six words is close to the ideal for advertising billboards.  The idea is to find the nugget and the words to match. It’s just one more way to get ideas on paper. You don’t have to evaluate it or judge it.  Try different ways to express the same thought.

Thanks to Larry Smith. And Hemingway.

 

Exactly when did bad advertising begin?

I think it began somewhere deep in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave.  The client looked at the cave drawings and said, “I’m not digging the bison.”

Human nature being what it is, these days there are a lot of clients not digging the bison.  Sometimes the agency is serving up less than stellar ads. Sometimes the client company will take the safe, well-paved route to “me too” advertising.

This is a conversation that has taken place in the halls of every agency long before Don Draper was conjured up.

In 1985, John O’Toole Chairman of the Board of the great agency Foot, Cone and Belding, gave a short speech in Chicago called “Who holds the keys to great advertising:  the client or the agency?”

27 years ago and it stills resonates. 

Here are some of the good bits.

 “Who are we to blame for non-great advertising -- or for dull, predictable, banal, even insulting advertising: the advertiser or his or her agency?  To put it, more positively, which party really holds the key to great advertising?

 A case can, and frequently has been made on either side of that question. 

Those who say that the client holds the keys point to the fact that an agency’s output varies in quality, sometimes achieving greatness for one client while falling far short for another. And there does seem to be a greater consistency from product to product on an advertiser’s reel than there is from client to client on an agency’s reel.

 Those who content that that the keys are in the hands of the agency observe that an agency change has occasionally taken a drab advertiser to greatness overnight.

Both sides are right. Both sides are wrong.  And it probably doesn’t make too much difference anyway.  Because the fact is that great advertising only occurs when client and agency are totally in accord.

From my point of view, a good agency can do good advertising for any company.  It can do bad advertising for any company. But it can only do great advertising for companies that crave it.

And that craving, like any other policy statement from a company is only credible, only actionable, only reliable when it is articulated and demonstrated at the top.

There is sufficient evidence to warrant a conclusion which I’ll call “O’Toole’s Rule”:

The higher up advertising involvement goes in an organization, the better the advertising.

 …I view with some alarm those companies where the system has been so warped that those in top positions may never see a great advertising idea -- companies where top management makes it clear t hat other priorities prevail or where an idea in its most fragile and vulnerable stage inevitably succumbs to a brand manager’s fear of terra incognita.”

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Terra incognita with all it’s ancient roots, captures the essence of the problem.

The agency doesn’t know with surety what will work.  The company, even with reams of consumer insights doesn’t either.

Show me research that says a duck or gecko will sell insurance.  Or a chubby, slightly cloying boy made of dough will sell Pillsbury bakery products.

Nearly three decades later, we’re still having this us vs. them conversation. And we probably always will.  There will always be people who don’t like bison.

O’Toole had it right.  An agency can only do great advertising for companies who crave it.

So here are Baker's Rules:

1. Follow the money

The classic detective line works in virtually any industry.  Who ever pays, decides.  Agencies can walk away from bad clients but no agency is going to kill a cash cow because an agency is ultimately a business.  

2. Respect is double-edged

I have worked with CEOs and Marketing Managers who see marketing as a necessary evil.  So the agency becomes a simply vendor.  If you want to alienate an agency, treat them like vendor.  And it works the other way.  If an agency thinks the marketing team or the CEO doesn't have a marketing bone in his or her body, they are probably missing key insights and not leveraging the experience of the boots on the ground.

3. Embrace constructive conflict

When I was a playwright, one of great assignments was to give two actors in the same scene conflicting motivations (unknown to each other). (i.e. Actor one, your job is to get the other actor to feel bad about himself. Actor two, your job is to make the other actor laugh.)

If we look through the motivation lens, we see that below the CEO level, the #1 job of the marketing team is keep their boss happy. At an agency, the #1 job is to create advertising that will impress potential clients and get you a job at another agency.  Can you see the conflict here?

Both clients and agencies will tell you that it's about building the brand and selling products -- but I'm talking from 30 years experience and see the day to day reality.

What I notice is that few people are well trained in constructive conflict.  The meeting room suddenly becomes very uncomfortable when ideas are challenged.  Especially when the agency challenges a CEO.  It has a chilling effect. Clients and agencies have to learn how to fight and defend ideas -- and not make it personal.  Yes, it's hard. Very hard.

Thanks John for 1985 and good luck to all you fellow cave dwellers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s entirely appropriate that Tom Monahan’s latest Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy workshop was held in an old dance studio in Providence courtesy of a great organization AS220. (See link below)

Tom has always been a choreographer of ideas.  He lights up when he hears a good idea.  And he likes it even better when you top one of his.

“If I had a business card, my title would be Creative Thinking Coach,” he told the group. 

Tom has other, more impressive sounding titles (like President of his own nationally known ad agency) but none that are more meaningful except perhaps for father and grandfather and New England Patriots fan.

He begins by flashing a quote on the yellow-painted wall. “You are not creative if your little dog knows you.”  Tom explains it’s a quote from Gertrude Stein and basically it asks ‘how predictable are you?’  If you’re predictable, chances are your creatively challenged.

Tom adds that "if it truly surprises, it's probably creative."

So why should we listen to Tom Monahan?

Because in a time when creativity coaches are becoming more ubiquitous, the difference maker is that Monahan has lived in the trenches. He has delivered creativity on demand for decades.  He was the youngest person recognized in the Wall Street Journal’s brilliant Creative Leaders campaign.

What Tom does is blend the imaginative with the practical to help people move beyond the expected to the extraordinary.

As he does in his book, The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy, Tom asks a question while pointing to his clothing. “What am I wearing?”  He gets the usual ‘correct’ responses. Then he asks “What kind of socks am I wearing?”  The usual suspects are Gold Toe, Argyle. Paisley, and Stripes.

Then he asks, “What’s an unusual design you wouldn’t expect to find on socks?” The wheels start turning and we hear ‘Santa Claus,’ ‘Babe Ruth,’ and ‘Fish.’

His final question is “What’s a highly unusual design you would never expect to find on socks?” That’s when things get imaginative.  ‘Bela Lugosi in a swimsuit.’  ‘The Last Supper.’  ‘The First Supper.’

The socks exercise is a metaphor for learning how to ask a better question.  And then asking better questions on top of better questions.

There is almost a collective agreement that most people in business ask basic questions.  We ask how are we going to get more people to buy brand X.  We don’t ask questions what would be the worst thing we could do to get people to buy brand X?  Or how can we stop selling brand X and start giving it away?

The nucleus of the Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy workshop is formed from two molecules: principles and tools. 

What Tom and creativity coach Lisa DiMonte add is passion.  The passion and experience for helping people move beyond argyle and into a bigger universe of ideas.

That’s the kind of chorography that makes the world a smarter, better place.

Nice work again, Tom. Check out his web site.

http://before-after.com/

Check out AS220

http://www.as220.org/about/about-as220.html

Sometimes we simply want answers.

Sometimes we crave experiences that lead to answers.

A few years ago at a TED conference. Peter Skillman introduced a design challenge called the marshmallow challenge. The idea was  simple: Teams of four have to build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and a marshmallow. The marshmallow has to be on top.

This is exactly the kind of exercise that drives some executives to question why management brought in the crazy facilitator.  But the exercise reveals from surprising truths behind collaboration and the assumptions we make unconciously.  

I will play spoiler when I tell you that when this exercise is played by business executives, MBAs, Lawyers and pre school kids -- the kids out perform and out think the people in suits.

Here is Tom Wujec at another TED Conference succinctly telling the Marshmallow story and adding his own insights and ideas about collaboration,rapid prototypeing and learning. It's 6 minutes short and worth every minute.  

If you're on an iPAD, you can view it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0_yKBitO8M

 

In the early 1990s, Chic Thompson and Lael Lyons wrote a wonderful book called Yes, But…The Top 40 Killer Phrases and How You Can Fight Them

While the book was playful and filled with cartoon illustrations, the idea was serious.  It was about those killer phrases that fill corporate meeting rooms everyday:

Yes, but…

We’ve done that before.

It's not in the budget.

Great idea, but not for us.

Get a committee to look into that.

I'll get back to you.

Don't rock the boat.

Let me play devil's advocate.

The last person who said that isn't here anymore.

Recently, I’ve noticed a curious mutation on the infamous, “yes but.”

It’s IKB or (I know, but…)

The difference is slight but it’s definitely a new species.

“I know but tosses” in what James Pennybaker, the chair of psychology at the University of Texas Austin would call pronoun revealing.

“I” is a pronoun rife with self focus.  In fact, Pennybaker’s research showed that depressed people use the pronoun “I” more often than emotionally stable people.  And people who consider themselves lower in status use “I” much more frequently.

But what’s equally revealing is that “I know, but” is a signal. It’s a signal that the person has either wrestled with this idea before or wants you to understand what they know or believe.

A few years ago, I consulted with a CEO who was having problems with one his executives.  In exit interviews, employees consistently mentioned this manager as one of their reasons for leaving. This executive was a world-class micro-manager.

When I asked the CEO about this executive and the results of the exit interviews, he said, “I know, but…”

So I said, let’s look at what you’ve just said. “I know but…”  Tell me what you know.

One of the knows was the lynchpin.  The CEO and the executive were friends and the relationship was important to him.

If you find yourself using the phrase “I know, but” with increasing frequency, write down the “I knows…”

As Mark Twain eloquently wrote: 

“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

Good insight for any age.

 

 

 

 

 

Fast Company’s February cover story is titled “The Secrets of Generation Flux" The article by Robert Safian is a story of how the chaos of business is creating  a new generation of people who are adapting and thriving in the latest incarnation of the new economy.

“The idea of taking risks, of branching out into this ambiguous future, is scary at a moment when the economy is in no hurry to emerge from the doldrums and when unemployment is a national crisis.”

According to Safian, “The new reality is multiple gigs, some of them super short with constant pressure to learn new things and adapt to new work situations, and no guarantee that you'll stay in a single industry.”

Equally fascinating is the series of infographics that demonstrate the unprecedented acceleration of business change.  

Here are 6 infographics -- 6 snapshot of how business is evolving.  See link for full article in Fast Company.http://bit.ly/w2YWw0

  

I saw this amazing presentation by Idris Mootee CEO of Idea Couture a few years ago and was amazed just how well this single slide show condensed 20 years of branding lessons into about 80 slides. The thinking is remarkable. And the graphics are incredibly well done. If you want to rethink branding. Understand why it has replaced virtually every other term (advertising, marketing etc) then take a look at this inspiring Slide Share Presentation.
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