Module 6 Flashcards
What exactly is creativity?
The ability to produce original and unusual ideas that effectively communicate a message or promote a service/product. Its about finding new and innovative ways to capture attention, evoke emotions, and drive action.
“People tend to think of creativity as a mysterious solo act, and they typically reduce products to a single idea.” - Ed Catmull, President of Pixar (2014)
4 principles for fostering a creative environment
- Be curious - actively seek out different people’s experiences and opinions
- Give candid feedback - honestly is critical to effective collaboration
- Enable and be part of an ever-changing process - creativity involves imagination and innovation; we need to be open to experimentation with how we work and be confident to suggest new ways of working.
- Be collaborative - creativity happens best with a small group of diverse people. Tim Hartford conducted an experiment where he took two groups of people: four friends, three friends and a stranger. The four friends had a 50% success rate, whereas the other group had a 75% success rate.
Principles of a good creative brief
- Clear, self-contained and explanatory
- Brief and concise
- ‘Joined up’ and tell the story
- Inspiring
- Workable i.e. could you write to it?
- Single-minded and unambiguous
- Linked to the business issue
- Based on a consumer insight
- Simple
What is the ‘Jobs to be done’ theory by Clayton Christensen and how has brands used this methodology to break into new markets?
Jobs to Be Done is a lens that reveals the circumstances—or forces—that drive people and organisations toward and away from decisions.
While conventional marketing focuses on market demographics or product attributes, Jobs to Be Done Theory (JTBD or Jobs Theory) goes beyond superficial categories to expose the functional, social, and emotional dimensions that explain why people make the choices they do.
Pampers used Jobs to be done to break into the chinese market by focusing on the emotional ‘job’ parents in China wanted their diapers to fulfil.
Instead of marketing diapers solely for practicality, Pampers tapped into Chinese parents’ desire to help their babies develop and thrive. They emphasised how Pampers could improve sleep quality, linking it to better brain development for children.
By framing their product as a tool for nurturing child development, Pampers aligned with parents’ aspirations, successfully differentiating themselves in the Chinese market.
What is a Single-Minded-Proposition (SMP)?
An SMP is the core message or idea at the heart of a campaign promoting a product. It is a concise, focused statement that communicates the unique benefit or value the product or service offers to the target audience.
Its an internally agreed strategy reduced to a single-short sentence, stating the ONE most compelling reason for your target audience to buy from you.
e.g. ‘Red Bull gives you wings’
An effective SMP is simple, meaningful, and memorable, driving the campaign’s messaging across all channels.
What is content?
Any output of work we generate from the brief, for example, TV, digital content, experiential events, posters, direct mail or games.
Content can be conceived in 3 ways:
- Individually - Sometimes having individuals break away from the group to generate ideas, and then regroup to share can widen the net on ideas.
- In teams - In more traditional agency set ups, creatives work in teams. They will brainstorm together, bouncing ideas off each other.
- Bigger structured workshops - If structured well, a group brainstorm can be a great way of getting lots of different ‘thought starters’ quickly.
Content can be created by observing, reading about it, or looking for inspiration outside your industry.
What is the waterfall model in the context of creative work?
It is a linear and sequential approach to project management. It breaks a project into distinct phases, where each phase must be completed before the next one begins. This method emphasises upfront planning, detailed documentation, and clear stages of progress.
Pro: Speedy
Cons: Inflexible - changes in scope or feedback late in the process can be costly and difficult to address. Also progression cannot happen without client approval
What are product design sprints
Product design sprints are five-day structured brainstorming sessions based on agile development and design-based thinking. Forward-thinking agencies are increasingly adopting this model, as it encourages iterations and learning as per the content-led model but majors on collaboration and enables contribution from a broad set of stakeholders.
It is excellent when the creative solution is not predefined and allows for broad or diverse thinking and outputs. However, sprints can only succeed with clear goals set up front, and chances of project failure are high if individuals aren’t committed or cooperative. This framework can be successful only with some core experienced team members or a ‘coach’.
Matesscu, A “The design sprint” (2017)
Understand the audience and their needs
Diverge; exploring all possible solutions to the problem
Decide - choosing the best idea and storyboarding it
Prototype - prototyping the chosen solution; building something quick and dirty to show to users. The focus is usability
Validate - show the prototype to real users outside the organisation and learns, via user feedback, what doesn’t work
How to give feedback
Be knowledgeable in advance - Recap the brief and have some further background knowledge — knowing other work in the category, culture and ideas seen elsewhere.
Clarity - Question the idea and understand the difference between the idea and the execution.
Question yourself - Most reactions to a piece of work are almost certainly based on feelings. Establish if any influences may skew objectivity when giving feedback.
Question the idea - Try to use open questions because they encourage ideas to develop.
Reflection - The creative team will want immediate feedback. Asking for a short time to reflect and think about the idea is a reasonable request. Feedback should be honest, objective, detailed and constructive
Nurture vs. kill - Timing is critical to the type of feedback given. As long as an idea is on-brand, there is time for it to develop. Don’t kill things too early in creative development because it can demotivate the team.
Creative thinking vs creative development
Creative thinking is all about approaching a problem differently, and is something everyone in the industry should be able to do.
e.g. having meetings in fun and creative places to spark new ideas and discussions
Creative development is the act of actually developing creative work — from writing a creative brief to brainstorming ideas to making those ideas.
Edward de Bono’s ‘Six thinking hats’
A problem-solving and decision-making tool that encourages people to think in different ways by “wearing” six metaphorical hats, separating thinking into functions and roles. It helps teams explore problems from multiple angles, avoiding groupthink and fostering creativity.
By mentally wearing and switching “hats,” an individual or team can easily focus or redirect thoughts, conversations or meetings.
‘A popular thing for a broken thing’ game
Outlined in Mark Earls’ ‘Copy, copy, copy’
It is a creative and improvisational activity often used for brainstorming or storytelling exercises. The goal is to come up with imaginative or humorous replacements for something broken, focusing on creative or “popular” solutions rather than practical fixes.
Step 1: Broken things
Identify things that don’t work for consumers in the category. Write down what’s most important to fix from a user’s perspective.
Step 2: Popular things
Identify things that are particularly great in another category. From a user’s perspective, write down a list of amazing services (on or offline).
Step 3: Matching up
Try to create solutions for each ‘broken’ thing by matching it with a ‘popular’ thing.
