The Creativity Dilema

Steve Jobs really knew how to innovate and was famous (or should that be notorious) for his: 'reality distortion field'. He would often say to his staff, 'let's do this new thing' and his staff would respond with 'how is that even possible?' His response... 'just do it!'

Now, don't think for a second that I am a fan of Apple, I am not.
But you have to admire Steve Jobs' creative attitude, he wanted creativity, and was less concerned with the feasible constraints of current reality.
He wanted innovation and creativity, and gave his team permission to go there and do what had to be done to achieve it.
How they got there was of little concern, as long as they got there in the end.

Meanwhile... in my reality of writing commercials: Many people have differing opinions on what something creative like a commercial might actually be.

I cannot tell you the amount of times that I have written ad's that were creative (because that is what was requested), only to have the client say, no, they wanted their phone number, address, Facebook page and website mentioned as well.

Ummm.... that kinda kills the creative part of the ad and removes over half of the content you were trying to fit in creatively.

Is creativity in any form (technology or radio scripts) based on expertise? An idea? A concept? Or a vibe?

2 people with the same expertise in a field will look at a problem, and rate it's creative solution in 2 very different ways.
For example one might have the mind-set of 'how' do I do this, they other 'why' should I do this.

When you say "we want a creative innovate commercial that makes us stand out from the crowd", and we say "Great! Here's some creative ideas!" Suddenly, what you see as creative, and what we see as creative are worlds, if not universes apart.

But take heart, it's not just the client customer relationship where this is true.
Even manager to co-worker, even individuals in each department can see the same thing and think it is, or isn't creative.

So even if we produce one version of a 'creative' script, the decision makers may have wanted another, and their staff have a different idea all together. The result in this case is usually something that is bland, and boring and not creative in the slightest bit.

The solution then to this 'creative dilemma' is what?

My choice is to just have one person involved with the decision making, and have them only decide on what to go ahead with - why? 

Because that one person can have the world laid out before them as to 'why' this was written 'that' way, and it will make sense to them (hopefully), then, if they have done it right, so will their customers and clients.

It's just a thought, but are too many people involved in your decision making process?

If you want something 'creative' done, are you bowing down to a team mind set where everyone has their own agenda, or are you prepared to make a stand and be creative yourself?

This post was written for the B4C by Earl Pilkington

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