GET
CREATIVE
When was the last time you came up
with a creative idea?





This morning
Yesterday
Last week
Last month
Last year
What was it?
What motivates you to be creative?
“Discovery consists of
looking at the same thing as
everyone else and thinking
something different.”
—Dr. Albert Szent-Györgyi (won the Nobel
Prize in 1937 for discovering Vitamin C)
Johannes Gutenberg
Rule breaker. User of crazy,
foolish and impractical ideas as
stepping stones to new ideas.
He combined two completely
unconnected things:
The wine press
Purpose: to apply force over a large
area to squeeze juice out of grapes
The coin punch
Purpose: to leave an image on a
small area like a gold coin
What if I took a
bunch of these coin
punches and put
them under the force
of the wine press so
they left their image
on paper?
Voila!
The printing press with movable type
Great ads need to resonate with the
audience, but they also must be
relevant.
An ad can be great entertainment, but not great advertising.
Great advertising has a strategic mission to fulfill.
Strategy is at the root of all great creative work.
Expect More, Pay Less
We all know Walmart as the retail “big box” monster. But
one company that has competed and found a sizeable
niche is Target. Its “Expect More, Pay Less” positioning
statement allows the retailer to deliver good value in
pricing, but also tout a higher scale shopping experience.
Target promotes a softer side that has resonated with
customers. Although the recession of 2009 hit Target and
other retailers hard, Target weathered the storm by sticking
to its core advertising message. As the economy
recovered, Target experienced increased revenues. Target
has prospered by offering consumers an alternative to
Walmart and by communicating that difference in
advertising.
“To be great is to be
misunderstood.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Martin Luther King was seen as a troublemaker
before he was universally seen as a saint.
Ted Turner was laughed at when he first tried to sell
the concept of a 24-hour news channel.
Before Einstein was celebrated as the world’s
greatest thinker, he was thought to be just a guy with
crazy ideas.
And in 1997, Apple was being called a “toy” that
was only for “creative types,” and it was being
chastised for not having the same operating
system as everyone else.
“Think Different”
Exercises
Source: “A Whack on the Side of the Head” by Roger von Oech
Exercise 1.
An eccentric old king wants to give his
throne to one of his two sons. He decides
that a horse race will be run and the son
who owns the slower horse will become
king. The sons, each fearing that the other
will cheat by having his horse run less fast
than it is capable, ask the court fool for his
advice. With only two words the fool tells
them how to make sure that the race will
be fair. What are the two words?
Exercise 2.
What is this figure?
Exercise 3.
Take a sheet of newspaper. Put it on the
floor so that when two people stand face to
face on it, they won’t be able to touch one
another. Cutting or tearing the paper is not
allowed. Neither is tying up the people or
preventing them from moving.
Exercise 4.
This is the Roman numeral seven. Use a
single line to turn it into an eight.
VII
Exercise 4.
This is the Roman numeral nine. Use a
single line to turn it into a 6.
IX
It’s hard to think about things differently
when most of our time is spent not needing
to be creative. Driving, checking out at the
store, popping a K-cup into the Keurig.
Habit is the business of living. Without
routine, life would be chaos and we
wouldn’t be able to accomplish too much.
When it’s time to get creative, though, it’s
your chance to open those mental locks.
• Forget the “right answer.”
• Forget the rules.
• Play. (Lego double-decker couch,
anyone?)
• Forget what’s practical.
• Embrace ambiguity.
• Forget what’s logical.
• Dig around everywhere to find the
golden bone.