A Creative Approach to Marketing - Primal Branding

A book I’ve read recently called Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon made me think about not only marketing, but how this is tied in with our lives.

His main idea is that every successful brand has the following:

·       A creation story – an interesting backdrop to how things began.

·       A creed – what is your mantra?

·       Icons – the symbols that make your product instantly recognisable.

·       Rituals – the things you always do that bind your customers together as a group.

·       Pagans/non-believers – those who don’t know about your brand or actively oppose it.

·       Sacred words – words or phrases particular to you brand that are important.

·       The leader – someone to push the idea forward.

The creative part to me is how this links in with the human psychology of myths and legend.  It is, essentially, a key to unlocking the human mind.

If you want to create a compelling brand or product, are all the above present?  Missing one or two doesn’t mean you don’t have a phenomenon on your hands, but it gives you a yardstick to where there are areas to improve.

Most interesting is that the above can apply to any human endeavour.  Think about your career.  What do you stand for?  Do people know this?  What ways could you get your creation story across?  It’s all ways to think about how you can improve your own brand at work.

Have a think about how you can apply this to your brands and products, but also to your leadership and career potential.

Is Peter Jones Creative?

I was watching the BBC’s programme about the members of the Dragon’s Den and it was the one about Peter Jones which I’d taped.  It got me thinking about whether he is creative.  Of all the Dragon’s Den entrepreneurs I’ve read about or seen on television, I think Peter Jones came across as the most creative.

The overall feeling I got from the show was that he was the Dragon who most used his position to find new and different businesses which weren’t like all his others.  Watching the show he really got into all the ideas people had and really seemed to enjoy the new opportunities they opened for him.

Equally, there was an interesting comment from the usual presenter of Dragon’s Den, Evan Davis.  When explaining Peter’s success he outlined how one insight into being different in the distribution of mobile phones built Peter Jones’ empire.

So, while you can never say for sure, my feeling was Peter Jones is probably the most creative because he not only sees the value in new products, but also innovates in the area of his business model as well.

If you want to know more about how Peter Jones thinks, he has written a book on the subject of starting in business and leadership which you may want to read.

Should You Get Creative in Risk Areas?

I’m often saying you can be creative anywhere.  Innovation doesn’t have to just be about new products or marketing.  It can also be about improving processes.  But should you really be creative about things like your legal contracts or risk procedures?

The answer is yes, but with a caveat.  Many times you can increase efficiency by cutting out a part of a process or doing things in different ways.  For example, are your customer or client contracts very user friendly?  Maybe there is something to do in this area.  But I can hear a few people getting jittery about messing with control procedures, legal documents and anything else that protects a business.

That’s where the caveat comes in.  You can’t just innovate for the sake of it.  First, come up with ideas, but then you need to think about what will work and what won’t.  It is a two step process, but you need to be careful not to mix the two.  You could stop a good idea in its tracks by judging it too early.

However, you shouldn’t use the excuse that ‘this is a risk procedures so we can’t change it!’.  Genuine advances in administration areas such as legal and accounting may give you a more streamlined and efficient business which creates a competitive advantage.

For a look at a lawyer trying something different, Jon Groth’s blog is worth a read.

The Web as Innovation Engine

Why is there such potential for creativity and innovation on the web?  A number of reasons mean the requirements for creativity are all present on the web, which makes it one of the best places to create new ideas and invent products.  Consider some of the following:

·       Passion – people on the web often love what they do, and often don’t take part to make money, but rather because they are just happy to be in the game.  If you don’t like what you’re doing, you are much less likely to be creative and innovative.

·       Different viewpoints – on the web there are so many different viewpoints and ways to look at things.  If you take part in any of the various ways of communicating on the web, you won’t be able to make your opinion known without someone providing further comments, which might include support but can also be constructive criticism.

·       People power – there are so many people on the web that this distributed processing power could be put to enormous use for creative purposes.

·       Information – the availability of information at all levels, and the contacts to ask questions, means you can be more creative more quickly and remove blocks and technical problems to keep moving.

That’s why I think the web is potentially the biggest Innovation Engine in the world.  Many businesses are unaware of the potential power of the web, and often don’t use it to full potential.  I think this is because creativity and innovation are all about sharing ideas and using someone’s insight to build on.  Business is used to being more protective and insular, so struggles with the web ethos of being open.  But more and more people are leading the way and I think this could be a big development area for creativity.  The potential has only just started being put to use.

A Mind Like Spaghetti

Sometimes creativity doesn’t work because you have a mind like Spaghetti.  Let me explain.

Unless you use creativity techniques or have some method for controlling the way you think, your thoughts are not normally organised.  You tend to think in a number of different ways, which often clash with each other and don’t fit together.  Some of the different ways you think are:

·       Creatively – coming up with new and different ideas.

·       Critically – looking for problems and flaws in ideas.

·       Emotionally – considering how it will feel to do something, regardless of logic.

·       Logically – thinking through the outcomes in order.

·       Realistically – considering how you are going to get things done.

When considering a problem or issue we could use any one of the above from moment to moment.  Have you ever been in a meeting that meanders through the issues, with people having different ideas and arguments for certain courses of action?  One person suggests an idea, another shoots it down.  That’s spaghetti thinking in action.

You can overcome this by assigning a certain part of each meeting to a certain type of thinking.  Anyone who thinks in a different way is then told to stop (and note the point for later to bring up in the section where it’s appropriate).  For example, you begin a session being creative.  The time is for new ideas and new takes on the issue.  If someone says something won’t work or brings up a problem, they are told that is critical thinking and needs to be addressed later.  You then move on to getting more ideas!  It takes real discipline to stay with one type of thinking for the allotted time.  Once the session on creativity is over, you might move on to critical thinking, for example.

This is the basis of Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats where he has set out the main ways of thinking for you to use with his method.  It is very useful and saves a huge amount of time in meetings (based on my practical experience), because everyone is on the same page and accomplishes what is needed, without fighting over their ideas or accusing people of being negative.

So, would you like to be able to think in a considered way, with each type of thinking covered sequentially – like uncooked spaghetti, all uniformly laid out in its package?  Or, would you rather be like a bowl full of cooked spaghetti, randomly ordered and all over the place?  Think about how you think and put it to good use.

Disney's Magical World of Creativity

Unforgettable films with characters that have become icons.  Amusement parks that draw visitors like no others.  Walt Disney and the corporation he started have shown an amazing ability to create and implement ideas that have grabbed the world’s attention.  But how were they able to do it.  Welcome to Disney’s Magic World of Creativity!

Disney had a method for coming up with and implementing ideas, which had three distinct stages:  the dreamer, the realist and the critic.  When a nascent idea was being developed it would go through each of these stages, probably several times.

·       Dreamer – in this stage any good idea is put forward.  This is the area where blue sky thinking is allowed and even crazy or impractical ideas are considered.  You are not allowed to criticise at this stage, it is purely about being creative.  Think ‘what kind of things would we want to do if money and time were not an issue’.

·       Realist – now the idea is developed for the real world.  Out of all the creative ideas, which ones can be implemented into the plan?  Which ones will work well, and which should we leave behind?  It is in this stage that an overall plan is initially formed from the best ideas in the dreamer stage.

·       Critic – the idea is now looked at from different angles to fix potential problems.  How could we do this better?  Where does something seem out of place or not quite right?  Any issues which may cause a problem should be brought to light and discussed.

Going through these stages in order means logical thinking is applied to the creative process.  It ensures all the necessary types of thinking are present, but that each one gets its fair turn for consideration, instead of the free-for-all that often happens (with the critic usually winning the day!).

What ideas are you working on at present where this method would save you time and push an idea forward?  Think about its practical use for something that has bogged down and doesn’t seem to be working.  Give it a try and see if it can take you months forward where you were already behind.  It really works if you apply it.

Pushing Through the Creative Barrier

Having recently been through a number of creativity sessions where I work, I’ve noticed something mysterious.  Even though these sessions are meant to bring out new ideas to take us ahead of our competitors, they amazingly seem to bring up the same three or four ideas.  It’s true the ideas weren’t exactly the same, but they were very similar and related to the same issue.  I did these sessions across different parts of our business, so it was not just that one area had like minded people in it.

I think this highlights one of the main dangers in creativity, and you need to be constantly aware of it.  If you don’t push past the pain barrier, you’ll never have really creative, ground breaking ideas.  What do I mean?  It was clear from the sessions that people stopped really trying after coming up with maybe ten or so ideas.  They then started chatting about other things.  But creativity is about breaking out of the usual ruts of thinking.  What happened in this case was the brain thought it was too difficult, and just stopped trying after awhile.  Do you recognise this problem?  It is the reason there are so few new ideas in business on a day to day basis.

The main way to alleviate this problem is a simple one.  When doing brainstorming and creativity exercises, always have a goal for a minimum number of ideas.  I would suggest at least 25 distinctly different thoughts or ideas before you even think of calling a halt.  Even if you have 24 ideas, and you think there is a really killer idea in there, the final one might even be better.  Keep pushing and trying.  The other thing to do is to encourage crazy and funny ideas, because these often lead to serious and new ideas which are outside the usual way of thinking.

So, push past the creative barrier if you want to avoid the ‘same think’ you normally get.  Push others for more, and be open to anything different or unusual.  That’s what I learned from my sessions and I hope you can incorporate in advance to make yours more effective.

Get it Made to Get it Implemented

One of the main ideas behind creativity is to get as many ideas as you can, and then get rid of the ones that don’t work for you at the moment, taking forward the ones which have possibility.  But even once you’ve pruned and deleted the ones you don’t need, how do you handle the several which may be left?  The answer is rapid prototyping.

You’ve got your idea in front of you.  It is a few lines on a post-it or a scribble on some brown paper.  It stares at you.  It’s chiding you to do something.  Now’s the time to act!  You need to work up a rough outline of all the main areas you’ll need to make happen in order to implement the idea.  It shouldn’t take you more than an hour.  Here are a few thoughts:

·       Materials – what will you need to make it?  Does it need to be fancy or cheap?

·       Look and feel – should it represent high design or cheap and cheerful?  Is it curvy or square?  What colour is it likely to be?

·       Delivery – how will it be delivered?  Who will do it?

·       Marketing – how will it be marketed?  What is its unique selling point?  Why should people buy it?

Once you’ve had a think about the above, there is one more key - build it!  Make a mocked up example using whatever materials you have.  Try to get it to look and feel like you’ve outlined above.  Don’t worry about it being perfect.  Just get it done in whatever way you can.  Then keep developing, honing and perfecting it.  Even service companies, lawyers and accountants who sell ideas can mock up how their final sales slides will look.

The real power is in getting something tangible in your hands.  It will make the idea easier to sell, as well as pointing out any flaws or problems up front.  Once you’ve got it in your hands, the possibilities become more real, and the process takes on new meaning.  And that just increases the possibility of it finally being implemented.

Creativity - The Many, The Value, The Tribe

Here’s an interesting thought.  If every working person in the UK added just £10 of extra value to their job every year, the economy would be worth an extra £294 million.  How much time and energy would be necessary to create just £10 of extra value?  Once you understand how creativity works, as explained in many of the previous posts on this blog, you’ll realise it could take as little as a few minutes each month.  And the value doesn’t need to be created by a hugely new idea or ground breaking technology.  It could be simple things such as

·       a slightly better sales technique that closes one extra sale,

·       an idea that saves a bit of cost making a business more profitable, or

·       a clever tweak to a window design which brings in two or three extra customers.

Imagine all these little ideas accumulating to create real power in your business or company, due to just a little extra thought and consideration.

The better news is it doesn’t stop there.  Once you get a hang of how to be more creative, your mind doesn’t just shut off at one idea.  All the work you do continues to create more ideas.  Every new product or approach can lead to even newer breakthroughs and give other people inspiration.  You won’t be able to put up with mediocre any longer.

Now imagine this power is magnified even further by a group of individuals or employees who catch the innovation bug and spread it through your enterprise.  What if you could harness the power of, as Seth Godin puts it, a tribe of people who are into what you want to achieve and dedicated to creating this value?

Put to its best use, creativity and innovation can transform your profit making power every day, every month and every year.

Labour statistics from the Office for National Statistics for the 3 months to September 2008.

Up and Down the Concept Levels

There’s nothing new under the sun. 

There are only 6 main plots in fiction writing which occur again and again.

Why are sayings like these perpetuated and repeated?  One reason is that thoughts and ideas can be considered from different levels, sometimes called ‘chunking up’ or ‘chunking down’ in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming).  Fortunately, even though this is often used to bad effect as in the saying above, it can also be extremely useful as a technique in creativity and innovation.

It works like this.  You have a concept that you want to play with and for which you want new ideas.  Say you are thinking about ‘shopping carts’.  Now you can take this up a level and this would become ‘things used to carry groceries’.  Alternatively, you could take this down a level and be more specific, say ‘wire shopping carts with children’s seats’.  You can see how going to the higher concept level starts to make ideas seem very similar, and pulls in more and more examples of items which fit within the concept.  This also explains why the opening phrases I set out can often make sense – because they speak to a very general level and ignore all the creativity and interest in the distinctions when you go back down the concept levels.

The good news for creativity is this can be a powerful way to generate new ideas.  You need to take the concept you are working on and go up a few levels, and then generate ideas which are helpful.  For example, instead of shopping carts you might say ‘ways to hold things’.  Then you apply creativity to come up with all the ways you can hold things – wicker baskets, plastic bags, your hands etc.  You then take one (or all) of these and apply back down to your initial concept.  In our example, you might take ‘baskets’ and come up with the concept of removable baskets which make up part of a larger shopping cart or removable baskets you slot into a shopping cart but which you can take home with you to avoid having to pack groceries. 

By going to a higher concept level, you are taking yourself out of your usual rut of thinking and moving to broader thinking about the subject.  This means your creativity can work more easily and you’ll see beyond the normal boundaries.  Next time an issue is bothering you or you need new ideas, go up a concept level (be more general) and see what suggests itself.

Can Creativity Make You Confident?

Creativity can make you more confident.  This is especially true in business, but I think it also applies to your personal life.  Some of the areas where it helps most are:

·       Goals – If you can imagine a better life and how you can achieve this, your life will improve.  And when you know where you are going in life, you’ll be more confident.  Creativity can be used in a number of ways to explore what you want to do and how to improve things.

·       Overcoming obstacles – Stuck in a rut?  Have seemingly insurmountable problems?  Creativity can help find solutions.  In doing so it relieves stress, and builds confidence that you can overcome any problem that comes your way.

·       Technical expertise – being able to create new, valuable ideas makes people realise you are technically competent and know what you’re talking about.

·       Business development – Having fresh ideas which set you apart from competitors makes it easier to talk to clients and easier to win work.  You feel confident discussing issues and may take a chance when contacting a target.

·       Talking to people – If you can generate ideas, you’ll be seen as more interesting.  And if you provide a creative solution to someone’s problem, you’ll be more popular.  Would you be more or less confident if you knew you had lots of ideas to talk about with people?

There are numerous other ways in which creativity can make you more confident.  Try out some of the creativity techniques and see if it helps you gain control of a tough problem or creates some better ideas for moving forward in life.

Spinning Creativity

You can have too much creativity.  There, I’ve said it.  Even though I’m the author of a blog on creativity, I admit you can have too many ideas.  But the best way to avoid this is to make sure you are focussing on the right areas for creativity and understand how generating ideas works.

The right focus needs to be about deciding what the key strengths of your business are, and making sure you use creativity to develop this into something that is a competitive advantage.  Refine what you do best and make sure you stay out in front of your competitors.  Where can this go wrong?  Many times it is unnecessary diversification.  You create new and innovative ideas about the types of market you could enter to use your skills, but then find you’ve spread yourself thin.  Sometimes you can even find that something you thought should work doesn’t.  Before implementing any changes you need to consider if you’re addressing your core strengths and sticking to what you can do best.  If not, you really need to do some intense thinking about whether to proceed.  Remember – you don’t need to pursue the idea right away!  Many times they can wait awhile as you get the measure of them.

You also need to understand idea generation.  There are two main phases.  The first is coming up with ideas, but the second is deciding which ones to pursue.  In the first phase, you need to use the techniques and brainstorm, focussing on coming up with as many ideas as possible.  But you don’t stop there!  You then need to cut, define and decide which ideas to develop.  You should really be looking to take forward only one or two ideas from what might be hundreds of initial thoughts, creations or approaches.  This is where you need to know your core strengths and cut mercilessly.  Where do you need the most help, or where would the greatest impact be on your business?  Take forward the ideas that address these areas and forget about the rest.

Avoid going wrong by just generating ideas all the time for no purpose.  Know what you are doing and why, and then pursue the strategy that’s best for your business.  It’s better to have a few powerful new ideas than numerous tweaks, twists and changes.  Avoid the spinning wheels of creativity which just sink you further into the mud.

Hidden Creativity - Profit Power

The last few posts were about the main hidden areas where you can apply creativity for profit.  But all areas of your business can benefit from creativity.  The main point behind highlighting hidden creativity is that it is already happening in small ways everyday (you just don’t see it) but if you make a concerted effort to apply creativity in all areas of the business, your profit will grow.  What are some of the other areas where you should be considering new ways of thinking?

·       Employee reward – it is not just money that motivates people.  What other ways could you inspire and excite employees?

·       Recruitment – if you aren’t attracting the very best candidates, no matter what your size, there may be an opportunity here.  How can you make people want to work for you?

·       Cost savings – if you’ve already cut off all the fat, and don’t want to cut any more, creativity may be called for.  Have you thought about all the ways to save costs?  What is a ‘cost’ anyway?

·       Logistics – Could you be making deliveries and shuttling people around in different ways?  What would you do if trucks didn’t exist?  What if there was no post?

·       Entertaining – it doesn’t have to be expensive to be exciting and get a client’s attention.  What are some small ways you could ‘entertain’ clients without taking them to an expensive dinner?

I could go on for ages, as almost every area of your business can benefit from thinking in different ways (IT systems, telephones, lighting and décor, health and safety etc.).  And it is all important because each small change can be an advantage over your competition, with the combined power of all the small advances giving you unexpected profit power.  Consider where you are missing opportunities, because they are around you in all areas.

Hidden Creativity - Strategy

There is hidden power in creativity when applied to strategy.  This is something I’ve seen where we work.  Normally, leadership uses the usual management tools to consider where they are in comparison to their competitors and to think about how they fit in their marketplace.  SWOT analysis anyone?  But when you introduce some of the creativity techniques and take people away from the usual analysis, they start to see the business in a different way.  The amazing thing is they often begin to think beyond protecting what they have and not losing market share to thinking about how they can create the future they want.  Suddenly, they begin to understand the possibilities of what they might be able to achieve, and this brings back some of the life and interest they might have had for the work previously.  Creativity brings out a positive view of the future which energises everyone.

A second area where creativity can bring out hidden value in strategy is opening up new opportunities which might not normally be considered.  In creativity, one of the main ideas is to not limit the types of ideas you’re having, but to come up with as many new and unique approaches as possible.  In using creativity in strategy, you begin to ask yourself:

·       Who could we combine our offering with, even if they aren’t in our industry?

·       In an ideal world, what would we get rid of from our current offerings?

·       If the sky was the limit, what new products would we introduce or markets would we open up?

·       What different metaphors could we use about our business?

Any one of these types of questions can spark off a big raft of new ideas and approaches.  Even if none of them come to fruition, you will have expanded how you see your market and business and will be more aware of changes as they happen.  And often, flexibility is power.

Hidden Creativity - Product Design

Most techniques have a natural design which makes them useful for creating new products.  It’s easy to think that by being creative we can improve our product, and that one tweak may mean our market opens up and products start flying off the shelf.  But I think there is one thing missing from this idea, which is often hidden from product development – the importance of design.

Do you really need another feature on your mobile phone?  How many people just make calls, take calls and send and receive texts?  Once in awhile I might use my camera.  If this is all I use, why is my phone designed to be so confusing?  Answer:  because customer needs and use have not been included in product design.  This concept often gets lost in the process when ‘refreshing’ a product line.  You can see it at its most obvious when an originally good product starts getting bogged down by new features which just confuse you and don’t add any improvement to your life.

Always keep your eye on what the customer really wants, then simplify, simplify, simplify.  If most people only use 2 or 3 main functions then these need to stand out front and centre.  Everything else (if it’s even needed!) should be hidden away.  Think about whether it really needs to be there.  Some of the most awesome design is about minimalisation and ease of use.  For example, on your computer why don’t the most used icons get bigger each time you click on them?  Wouldn’t it be great if the programmes you always use stood out automatically, and all the other rubbish that software providers add on faded away when they’re not used?

So tap the power of creativity and think about how you can delete, combine and streamline your products to make them the easiest, simplest design on the market.