The Quisenblog

One of the many marketing newsletters I received this week came from Marketing Sherpa. The guest-written main article was a lesson on crafting the right “subject line” for your emails that would generate the highest “open rate.” Good information. But it was the title of the article that really got my attention: “Which performs better: Creativity or Clarity?”

That got me thinking. Are there really folks out there who view the whole clarity/creativity dynamic as “either/or?” Who somehow think if something is “creative” that it can’t be “clear?”

To most of us in the business, being “clear” is actually the first consideration when being “creative.’

In its most basic form, creativity is “making the mundane interesting.” In an era where we’re overloaded with both targeted and random messages coming at us from all quarters (by some estimates as many as 5,000 ‘selling’ messages each day), making your communications interesting is a must. Unless your marketing offer is so unabashedly attention getting on its own (”Cure for cancer, just $10!”), you’re going to need some help rising above the pedestrian drivel our well-honed BS filters are good at keeping on the periphery of our consciousness.

Granted, there are practitioners who’ll go to any length to get your attention, even if the way they earn your attention has nothing to do with their actual offerings or benefits (Go Daddy, anyone?). Such practitioners are actually doing a disservice to both their clients and the public at large. As ad legend Bill Bernbach once said “It makes sense to run an ad with a man standing on his head only if you’re demonstrating pants that keep things from falling out of the pockets.”

True creativity doesn’t conflate with clarity. It builds from the Universal Truth of a product or brand, and presents it in a somewhat unexpected yet memorable way. This alchemy that creates something that is both clear and creative is most definitely the “heavy lifting” of our profession.

On some occasion, a marketer may shy away from a “creative” solution because he feels some readers/viewers might not “get it.” But as I mentioned in a guest post some time ago, it is poison to create for the dullards. This recent spot for FedEx is an example of how you can be creative without leaving the masses in the dust. It unmistakenly communicates “FedEx provides small businesses a competitive advantage,” but it does it in a way that is fun, memorable and relevant.

Be clear. But be creative. It’s not either/or.

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Mickey Creative, On Clients, Ramblings bill bernbach, borrowed interest, creative process, creativity, creativity vs clarity, FedEx

If I hand you a brick and ask, “How many uses can you think of for this?,” you’ll probably come back to me with a dozen or so uses, all of the functional, yeah-I-sort-of-expected-that variety. You may use it to build a wall. Or pave a patio. Build a house. Or even use it as a paperweight.

If, however, I asked you, “What 40 ways can you think of to use this?,” I’m likely to get a whole different kind of list. After exhausting the obvious uses above, you’ll find yourself uncomfortably searching for other unthought-of uses. Some will be totally silly, or non-sequitar. But before long (probably around number 25 or 30), you’ll actually hit on something truly original (paint it gold and hand it out as a Fort Knox souvenir…). It is here, at this uncomfortable point when you think you’ve exhausted all practical uses for the brick, where true creativity lives. It’s where you start to find new connections between the object at hand and the world around you. You start thinking beyond the obvious solutions. Your ego stops judging every passing thought in the name of quantity.

Creativity can be defined as the process through which the mind finds formerly unrecognized relationships between two entities or ideas. It is something that allows our audience to see something in a different way.

Creativity is hard. It is a trip into uncharted territory. It is bumping into ideas that quite frankly you don’t know how to judge or evaluate.

It is taking the obvious and making it interesting.

Knowing how our mind’s creativity works is the reason few advertising creatives settle on the first idea (or handful of ideas) they find. The thinking being, if it was that obvious to me, it must be obvious to everyone, therefore there’s nothing new or exciting about it. Truly creative solutions are a bit unnerving, not because they are provocative or irrelevant, but because you’ve never seen something quite like this, and your mind doesn’t know how to evaluate them.

So next time you’re presented with an idea or concept that makes you a little uneasy, avoid the reaction of rejecting it out of hand because it is “different.” Deconstruct it to see how that idea was developed. See if it answers the needs spelled out in the creative brief. Live with it for a time. Then form your conclusion.

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Mickey Creative, Ramblings, how-to brick story, creativity, where ideas come from

When I say “beverage bottle,” you no doubt have an image that comes to mind. Maybe it’s clear. Maybe it’s colored. Maybe it is plastic, or maybe it’s glass. Maybe it holds 12 oz. or 24 oz. But chances are you see the same basic shape and form as everyone else.

Everyone except for Stephan Linfoss, that is.

Linfoss is an entrepreneur in Finland who is having us rethink what a bottle is all about. And by rethinking the bottle, we’re forced to rethink everything associated with it—from what goes in it to how it is disposed to what its role is in our lives.

Linfoss describes his bottle as being “bagel shaped.” It is round, made of clear environmentally-friendly plastic and is reusable. Plus, it functions in ways ordinary bottles cannot. It can be stacked in the refrigerator, saving space. It can be attached to a belt or purse. But the most compelling feature of the Linfoss bottle is how it connects with people.

People are drawn to it. People want to touch it, inspect it, and see how it works. It puts a smile on people’s faces. And they can’t wait to show it to others.

If I were Coca Cola, I’d buy Linfoss’s design in a New York minute, no matter what the cost. Because as soon as consumers see that cool bottle at the point of sale or in the cold box, it’s game over. This bottle could do more to affect the sales of Coke (or whatever new product the beverage maker chose to put in it) than a $20 million ad campaign.

This design is a wonderful lesson in approaching a situation with a “beginner’s mind.” Linfoss points out that specialization and insider knowledge can be the enemies of breakthrough thinking. “You don’t want to have too much knowledge of the industry as a designer,” he says. “(Knowledge) prevents you from flying high enough.”

The bottle as we know it has existed pretty much in its current form for more than 150 years. If it didn’t exist in its current form today, we very well would approach the problems of “creating a commercial beverage container” quite differently. Given the technologies and materials available today, if you were asked to design a container from the ground up, you could easily arrive at the conclusion a bagel-bottle would be far more functional than a standard shaped bottle.

If something as simple and ubiquitous as a bottle can be “evolutionized,” then you have to accept the possibility that almost anything can be. And that—the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there is another, better, more engaging way of providing the most mundane piece of our offerings—is the whiff of possibility that gives us permission to dream about what would happen if we “set our conventions and knowledge aside” and truly created.

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Mickey Uncategorized advertising, creativity, ideas, marketing, product package, radically unique

Remember that old marketing axiom: Find a need and fill it? Well, it seems the folks at KFC are taking it quite literally.

The fast-foodier recently undertook an initiative to fill potholes in the city of Louisville, KY, in exchange for the rights to “brand” its handiwork with logos over the fresh asphalt (okay, no jokes about what they really do with their leftover mashed potatoes…). The pothole stencils will read “Re-freshed by KFC,” to correspond with the company’s new “fresh” position.

Am I the only one who’s struggling to recognize what asphalt and fried chicken have in common?

This effort will generate publicity for KFC and will definitely build good will among the driving public of Louisville. But beyond the obvious gimmickery, is this considered relevant marketing? Do we really think of filled potholes as “refreshed”? And is “fresh” the first thing we think of when we consider KFC?

Probably not. While I applaud the company’s efforts to think outside the box and consider ways to build good will, it would have been nice to see KFC do something that was more relevant to their Brand Vision and added to the experience of its customers instead of just trying to get their attention.

A couple of examples of companies creating bold initiatives that are long-lasting and more relevant to their Brand Visions: Charmin bathroom tissue, which recently developed an iPhone app called “Sit or Squat” that will help you locate the nearest clean public toilet (http://www.sitorsquat.com/sitorsquat/home#). Or electronics manufacturer Samsung, which has installed free cell phone and mp3 player recharging stations at gates of major airports.

My suspicion is that sometime very soon after the next rain washes away the logos from its handiwork, the folks at KFC will ask “What the heck did we just do?” Before long the folks in Louisville will have forgotten about it, and the folks outside Louisville will have never even experienced it.

No matter how this event plays out, I hope it doesn’t deter KFC or other marketers from trying bold initiatives. It would be nice if they could do it in a way that was more relevant to their customers.

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Mickey Ramblings brand vision, Charmin, creativity, iPhone, KFC, marketing, potholes, Sit or Squat

If I hand you a brick and ask, “How many uses can you think of for this?,” you’ll probably come back with a dozen or so uses, all of the functional, yeah-I-sort-of-expected-that variety. You may use it to build a wall. Or pave a patio. Build a house. Or even use it as a paperweight.

If, however, I asked you, “What 40 ways can you think of to use this?,” I’m likely to get a whole different kind of list. After exhausting the obvious uses above, you’ll find yourself uncomfortably searching for other unthought-of uses. Some will be totally silly, or non-sequitar. But before long (probably around number 25 or 30), you’ll actually hit on something truly original (paint it gold and hand it out as a Fort Knox souvenir…). It is here, at this uncomfortable point when you think you’ve exhausted all practical uses for the brick, where true creativity lives. It’s where you start to find new connections between the object at hand and the world around you. You start thinking beyond the obvious solutions. Your ego stops judging every passing thought in the name of quantity.

Creativity can be defined as the process through which the mind finds heretofore unrecognized relationships between two entities, perceptions or ideas. It is something that allows our audience to see something in a different way.

Creativity is hard. It is a trip into uncharted territory. It is bumping into ideas that quite frankly you don’t know how to judge or evaluate.

It is taking the obvious and making it interesting.

Knowing how our mind’s creativity works is the reason few creatives settle on the first idea (or handful of ideas for that matter) they find. The thinking being, if it was that obvious to me, it must be obvious to everyone, therefore there’s nothing new or exciting about it. Truly creative solutions are a bit unnerving, not because they are provocative or irrelevant, but because you’ve never seen something quite like this, and your mind doesn’t know how to evaluate it.

So next time you’re presented with an idea or concept that makes you a little uneasy, avoid the reaction of rejecting it out of hand because it is “different.” Deconstruct it to see how that idea was developed. See if it answers the needs spelled out in the creative brief. Live with it for a time. Then form your conclusion.

Posted by Mickey

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admin Ramblings advertising, creativity, marketing