I believe most marketers want to do the right thing. We want to succeed. We want to communicate the right way with our customers. Unfortunately, it’s so much easier in a meeting to point out an objective reason why we shouldn’t use a creative idea.
I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times. When faced with a choice of a creative idea versus straightforward information, some end up choosing the latter. Because it feels like the safe answer.
Let’s face it, creative ideas can be scary.
Lee Clow, the chief creative officer of TBWA\Worldwide, once described this relationship of fear and creativity in a simple tweet.
“Most ideas are a bit scary, and if an idea isn’t scary, it’s not an idea at all.”4
For many of us, creative ideas are the unknown. We may not understand how others come up with creative ideas and we’ve been taught in business to avoid risk.
Then a creative idea comes along and it makes us feel something. But in business school, we learned that business is a rational choice. Those who succeed are smart, not emotional. Emotions are something we have learned to push away. Emotions are beneath serious thinkers and rational leaders. Through logic and analysis, you will make good decisions and succeed in business.
But what if you understood emotions better. What if you opened the curtain and learned more about emotional ideas. If you took a rational approach to understanding creative ideas. Then it’s no longer scary.
I know some creative people try to shroud the creative process in mystery. And make it seem like it’s hard to come up with creative ideas. But it’s not. You can approach creativity with a rational perspective. I do it all the time.
Throughout my twenty-three years in this industry, I have viewed creativity differently than most creative types. Creativity isn’t a Zen thing where I magically stumble into ideas. I look for patterns and break apart the process, looking for balanced ways to solve creative problems.
By the end of this book, you should have a much better understanding of what a creative idea is all about. Which means you can retrain yourself to avoid reacting based on culture and start reacting with an open mind.
Let’s start with a simple principle that is foundational to all the science we’re about to review:
A creative idea is basically an emotional idea.
It can be that simple. Creative ideas tap into our emotions and make us feel something. This can be any emotion. It can be humor or sadness or fear or insight. Many leaders think that an emotional ad is just trying to be silly. Or too heartfelt.
Success is finding that perfect emotion to fit your brand—in that specific moment, where you can connect with a customer for the right reasons. That is what a creative idea should do. It’s a fact or a data point, surrounded by something that taps into your emotions.
That something could be storytelling, or art, or a combination of visuals and words. But the final effect is the same. It makes you feel something.
Some worry that their customers will push away their feelings, too. And then the piece of communication won’t work. More often, the emotional idea never sees the light of day. Even though we may laugh or feel something in the meeting where the ideas were presented, our instinct is to avoid emotions. So we go with the logical and safe idea instead.
But emotional ideas don’t have to be a mystery. In this book, we’ll discuss more detail about emotions, what makes them, and how you can use them to create better customer experiences that will improve your bottom line.
It’s funny, the more we understand our emotions, the more we can approach them with a rational point of view.
In a Wired article titled “The origins of design thinking,” Jeffery Tjendra explains how the act of creativity has been turned into a logical process.
“When design thinking is applied to business by making creativity logical, the results are tremendous.”5
Tjendra describes how companies that only manage innovation with logic and analytical thinking will be disrupted. But the companies that understand the value of creative thinking will thrive.
Sure, design thinking is a buzzword, but only because it has been proven to be successful. It’s now the framework for modern business innovation and has been adopted by companies around the world.
Another creative approach that is disrupting business is the idea of a design-led company. A design-led business is one that prioritizes the design process in everything it does. All business decisions and structure are built around the belief that design and creativity are the only way to differentiate your company.
In Silicon Valley, this trend is the new gospel. New startups and old tech giants are preaching the values of design thinking and design-led management.
The beauty of this trend is that businesses are starting to once again accept creativity as a serious business practice. They recognize that creative problem solving is a necessary approach to improve the bottom line.
And the analysts agree. Creativity, design, and great experiences are the new competitive advantage. Established companies that don’t embrace these emotional connections risk falling behind.6
The big issue, however, is how to integrate these principles into your business. Traditionally, the best type of employee to elevate design thinking in your company is a designer. Why? Because designers have been trained in the art of emotion.
One of the core principles of design thinking is empathy. And creative people have been immersed in the ideas and methods that create empathy. They have trained themselves to be extra sensitive to emotional ideas and concepts.
Creative people are drawn to emotion. They feel more when viewing art. They connect quickly with storytelling. And they’re rabid consumers of media and pop culture. They love anything with a creative pulse.
As a creative veteran, I get it. For decades, I’ve surrounded myself with creative ads that span the spectrum of emotions. I’ve studied decades of funny TV spots, read hundreds of inspiring stories, and analyzed every heart-rending ad in the award shows.
And over the years, my sensitivity to emotion has grown. Almost too much. I cry at every animated movie I watch with my kids. And I can no longer watch some drama films. (I cried for thirty minutes straight after watching A Beautiful Mind. Whew.)
It’s this intense training and exposure to emotion that makes a good creative mind. That’s why creative people can more easily discover a great creative idea. Or solve a problem in an unorthodox way. They can feel it. They’ve trained their brains to react to the slightest hint of emotion in any piece of communication.
To them, creativity isn’t scary because they’ve trained themselves to feel it. This is why the best way to help your business move toward creative innovation is to hire a creatively trained brain. Give deign a seat at the executive table.
The other option is to teach yourself to be more sensitive to emotions. I know this goes against our modern education system, but one of the best ways to know if creative ideas work is to first be able to recognize them. It just may take some time for you to get there.
But even with all the success of design-led thinking, high-touch creative, and experience-led businesses, many are still making marketing decisions based on an old framework that logic is supreme. We still place all our trust and base our goals on numbers. No emotions.
Unless business decision makers understand today’s new creative environment, we will continue to flounder. Unless we put creativity and logic on equal footing, we are missing out on marketing that can truly impact the bottom line.
This is the crossroads where we find ourselves today. And the purpose of this book. Should we try a creative idea or stick to a logical idea if we want better results? Do creative ideas really work better or not?
It’s time to dive into the science behind creativity.