Faults of Argument and Parallel Thinking!

One of my colleagues had a great argumentative mind. He would impeccably find 'fault' with every concept and idea. And yet, having found the 'fault' in reason/concept, he would fail miserably in building something new.

As I look back at many of the professional relationships I have had in Indian advertising, am amazed at how good many of us are at finding faults in other people's arguments and how little time(in relative terms) we devote to co-creating some idea/ concept!!

In case you are interested in this line of thinking, you could browse through Edward De Bono's book - Think! Before it's too late.

De Bono says...

1. With the traditional argument or adversarial thinking each side takes a different position and then seeks to attack the other side. Each side seeks to prove that the other side is wrong. This is the type of thinking that was established by the Greek Gang of Three (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle) two thousand four hundred years ago.

2. Adversarial thinking completely lacks a constructive, creative or design element. It was intended only to discover the 'truth' not to build anything.

Value is never really created by only the adversarial mode of thinking! You get an ego boost. That's all about it...

3. But there is another, more constructive form of thinking called 'Parallel Thinking'. With 'parallel thinking' both sides (or all parties0 are thinking in parallel in the same direction. There is co-operative and co-ordinated thinking. The direction itself can be changed in order to give a full scan of the situation. But at every moment each thinker is thinking in parallel with all the other thinkers. There does not have to be agreement. Statements or thoughts which are indeed contradictory are not argued out but laid down in parallel.In the final stage the way forward is 'designed' from the parallel thought that have been laid out.

4. A simple and practical way of carrying out 'parallel thinking' is the Six Thinking Hats method which is now being used widely around the world both because it speeds up thinking and also because it is so much more constructive than traditional argument thinking.

5. As you may already know, the "Six Thinking Hats" is a powerful technique that helps you look at important decisions from a number of different perspectives.

While we all know these things, rarely do we put them into practice! The different hats and what they stand for are here...Am meeting a friend for some idea-generation for his new venture, so let me wear the yellow(positivity) and green(creative) hats and meet him...cheers

Creativity 2.0, In-Game Advertising & TeliBrahma

I have to make a presentation to a bunch of creatives(of the ad agency creative department variety) on creativity 2.0 on Sunday!

Well have a host of ideas. Can share with anyone for a 'beer' and good conversation:-) While on the subject, read this article on in-game advertising in ET today. Chk out here...

Some nuggets from the same:

1. Gamers notice the brands that catch their eyes in online games. Music, chocolate, pasta or noodle lovers are likely to try the brands they see in the games they play.

2. The Zenith-Optimedia study says in-game advertising of various products contributes as much as 35% of the total revenues for gaming sites! Popular gaming portals like Zapak.com, Contests2win and Kreeda are looking at the model more seriously.

3. In-game advertising offers the advantage of understanding the profile of the gamers, which further helps in highly-focused communication with the right message to the target group.
Mental post-it - "I need to sit with a gamer over coffee once again".

4. The study found that all the gamers do take note of the brands being advertised in the games, but in-game advertising is influential for trials only among the chocolate, noodles and music lovers!!

5. Though online gaming is predicted to be $7-billion business by the end of 2008, it still remains a higher SEC phenomenon in the country. Of the total population of gamers, 41% belong to SEC A2, 20% to SEC B1 while just 9% belong to SEC C. Predictable.

6. If you think it is just the college going youth that is hooked to games, think again. The major chunk of gamers belong to 22-25 age group followed by those in the age bracket of 26-30 years. Apparently, women have no interest in the virtual gaming world. The study notes that 99% of the gamers are male while only 1% are female gamers.

7. Cricket is the most popular on-line game followed by chess, road fighter, boxing, FIFA, counter strike, pacman and football.

Does anybody have more bytes from this report??

The other early morning conversation I had was with a VC interested in Telibrahma! Got some understanding about localised blue-tooth marketing...

Must create a space for blue-tooth marketing in the creative brief from now:-)

On Being Creative 1

I have been struggling to write this first post of the year. Planners block in week one is not a good sign:-)

But I wanted to write about something happy, hopeful but most of all on the subject of being creative!

Luckily for me I stumbled upon Hugh MacLeod's(of the gaping void blog fame)this very old post(by life-on-the-web-standards).

Hugh is an ex agency copy-writer turned marketing strategist. But he is most famous for his cartoon-on-business-cards-concept(am a newly converted fan of his).

You can read the original post - 'How to be Creative'here

Here's my selection from the original spiked a little by my personal experience...

1.Ignore Everybody
And that includes EVERYBODY. Of course not all of them together and not all of them all the time!! LOL

Your spouse. Your parents. Your boss. The once-upon-a-time-mentor. The good-friend-who-always-thinks-good-of-you. The featured-in-the-Brand-Equity-Power List CEO type...

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.

2. Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in nursery.

The silo system puts all sorts of department labels to shut you up. But never lose your voice. Don't under-rate your inherent creativity. Write with your heart about the brand. Think taglines while you think strategy or run errands. Better the body copy of the ad if you can. Romance your brand in words slapped on gettyimages!

Think media neutral solutions. Think fearlessly. Talk about them. e-mail them to other people. Blog about them.

As a planner I have written print ads for clients, read out TV scripts at new business pitches often throwing the CD in a fit of shock, have written 360 brand narratives in new business and more over the year.

It's bloody tough & frustrating at times. But it's doable. And there's always a way for the creative mind:-) Like they will call a planner ad a brand print and other such non-sense! But stay on course. Enjoy the game!

Listen to the little voice(of creativity inside you) or it will die... taking a big chunk of you along with it.

Life has a little box of crayons for all of us. We didn't fear them in nursery, why fear them now?

3. Keep your day job.
THE SEX & CASH THEORY: "The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended."

For me this blog is SEX, enduring endless-pointless-meetings CASH.
Leading projects like 'Future of Mobility' SEX, doing 'daak bangla' research CASH
Thinking about planning and creativity as part of my day job is SEX, living 3 days a week in Delhi CASH:-)and Jet miles LOL

4. Hang out with a Changing World
Some people are hip to it, others are not. If you want to be able to afford groceries in 5 years, I'd recommend listening closely to the former and avoiding the latter.

That means hanging out more with the really creative people not labels and visiting cards, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you're already doing.

Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly.

It doesn't matter what industry we're talking about- architecture, advertising, petrochemicals, journalism- they're around, they're easy enough to find if you make the effort, if you've got something worthwhile to offer in return.

Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can't help you any more. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction.

In the past year and a half, it's the conversations with people
outside my department
outside my company,
outside advertising,
outside India,
outside my comfort zone,
outside of what I know that have been really insightful....

The insiders haven't had much to offer:-)

5. Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.

6. Don't worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.

7.The best way to get approval is not to need it.

In 2008 and beyond, we will have to get used to a world that will gradually not look like the world in which we have worked till now.

The agencies, our jobs, the power-equations, the concept of what's creative, the supremacy and primacy of 30sec commercials, creativity in the digital domain will require all of us to be more creative in whatever we do...

Related posts on the subject of creativity- The New Creative, Where's the Glue Around Here?, Open Source Creativity

GreatWayToHaveAWebsite.com

Some days back, Rob (Mosley) from a small London creative agency Nonsense wrote a mail to me...

He and his team are putting together their web-site...High Time We Had A Website
In a bigger agency set-up, few suits would have gotten together and created a brief and then it would have been delegated to the IT department/ their vendor and periodic status reports...

I think hightimewehadawebsiteis an example of online presence meets agency POV/ creativity meets WOM meets wisdom of the crowd!

Mental note : Must do something on these lines in the next 6 months...In fact the learning would be really useful for a co-creation project that I am doing(for some reason I don't like the sound of this word Co-creation though, sounds too mechanistic)

And guys...Do visit this site and vote...There are just 14 days before voting closes!!

Expectation Management in a Brand Fatigued World

I remember at the Carnatic Music & Business Creativity work-shop that I attended some time back, my friend Ram had posed a question to Sridhar if brands can create excitement by controlling the supply.

In the past few days, two cult brands have demonstrated it. The first one is the most over-used power-pointed case study in the world(ipod) and the other the greatest 'children's rage' of the century(the Harry Potter series. Both have immaculately created an unprecedented hype around their launch!

It's a clever use of pre-launch PR and expectation management...
The Harry Potter count-down poster at the Crossword next to Neo's day care!

The iPhone fan-atic in NYC!

Carnatic Music & Business Creativity

Odd combination but this is precisely what the workshop was all about! As with many such lateral diversions from my routine planner life, this workshop participation too was triggered by my friend Ram!

Organised by R. Sridhar( an Ogilvy veteran of 25 years and now an Innovation coach who runs IDEAS - RS), Bombay Jayshree(amongst the most sought after Carnatic musician and concert artistes) and T M Krishna(one of the leading figures of Carnatic music - a performer, teacher, composer, researcher)

When it comes to workshops in general. I am quite a cynic...I think they are largely corporate 'tamasha' and not much! But more about that in some other post...This one was different.

Between TMK and BJ, they played great soulful music. Even though I am a cipher when it comes to classical music, I thoroughly enjoyed it!

The loose agenda was to learn from the lives of 7 great Carnatic Music maestros - Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar - who introduced the current day crisper concert format!!

TN Rajarathnam Pillai - who fought to give the nagaswaram it's rightful place

Semmangudi Srinavasa Iyer - who influenced not only Carnatic music but also its organisation and administration.

GN Balasubramaniam - whose style and bani generated a new kind of audience fervour.

Palghat Mani Iyer - the first and last word in percussion

MS Subbulakshmi - who gained Carnatic music a place within India and in the International arena!

and TR Mahalingam - the maverick and the genius who gave a completely new dimension to the flute!

What I loved most about this workshop was the music and the erudite articulation of TM Krishna. Among the finest communicators I have met in along time...

Some nuggets from the worlshop:
1. Ariyakudi's strategy of 'Stop the concert when the audience wants more"...I guess all news channels, most celebrity endorsers cam learn from this insight LOL

2. TR Mahalingam's strategy of 'Changing the instrument'. He made the 8th hole in the flute to enhance the music...I guess often we get trapped in models and the rigid structures of our business. This advice is handy to tool around with rigidity in thoughts!

3. To me Ariyakudi appeared to be a great planner!! As he understood the shift in the audience and culture in the 1930s...

From few listeners to many
From exclusive royal patronage to mass patronage
From elaborate improvisation to briskness and brevity
From eight items per concert to almost twenty!!
From pure reverential listening to concert ticketing.

4. The story of the ever learning MS Subbulakshmi. She would go to listen to a relatively unknown musician in Mylapore if she felt there was something to learn from him/ her...

A great attempt at an unusual mishram of music and business creativity. Hats off to Sridhar and team for pulling this off! The prototype beta version would definitely evolve over ver 2.0!

All in all I loved the humility of these wise musicians. There is a lesson for all of us in the larger marketing and communication community who are often arrogant in our ignorance!!The life and the lessons of the maestros has been captured well in the coffee-table like book Voices within Carnatic Music. Worth a read!