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

Another School. More Fresh Thoughts

I have written about SchoolOfDavid, the open-source learning lab at David. Read more about it here...Post our merger, the school resurfaces under the brand name - Incubates.

I took my first session in Delhi earlier this week. Curious new faces! Generally got the impression that they liked this introductory session on 'what is account planning!'.

But the best reward was this e-mail I got from a Sr. AE today...
Hi,
Was listening to this song from the film life in a metro "in dino". there's a line in the song which says

jab mile thodi fursat khud se karle mohabbat

i think it's an awesome line and these days most of us have no time for ourselves...too apt for today's generation.
Let me know what you think of it.

I too think it's a nice line/feeling...
I am never surprised at the level of understanding and creativity inherent in the young minds of our industry, even as we berate the lack/ exodus of talent. But what heckles me no end is that most often we fail to tap into/ train/ motivate this reservoir of talent...

Hope, we will be able to make a small difference...Okay got to go. Got to pack my bags for the Goa Adfest...

Being David - A Spirit Rarer than Tanzanite

It's a special day and a sad one...As I write this post, there are packers all around me, wrapping the last remains of a small agency called David.

It's funny how much I have got attached to this agency in just over 12 months!

Are we the creative hot-shop that the world(well, part of it at least) calls us?
Maybe we are not.
Are we radical in the way the edgier agencies in the western hemisphere have adopted new media?
No again...

But, I can say with certainty that Brand David as it stood and shone is/ was culturally the richest agency brand in India!

Before it was decided to merge it with Bates Asia. Because it makes sense to have a stronger mid-sized network in the region...

But in life and in business what makes sense may not always be right!
Cultures are about shared dreams. They need more nurture and less merger!

After my initial anger and resilienece, the planner in me has bought into the merger.
David hasn't.

You may ask, if we aren't edge-ily creative or new media mavericks...what makes us so special...

My list wud include the following.

1. Josy Paul - the maverick guy who along with Madhukar Sabnavis and now Kumar started it all.

2. I don't know about the other 5 years but in the last one year while I have been a David, Josy has helped create a culture of creative strategists...

Creative in the new millennium is not about 'silo thinking'! The best work comes from a seamless integration of creativity and thinking! And we have here in our play-rooms and on the WallOfDavid.

We have done brave thinking...The results may not match to our efforts...But in our thinking and culture, we may be as edgy as W+K, Mother, Naked, et al...

3. David's model of senior guys hands-on everything and lots of energetic young Davids worked for us!

4. We have possibly the best training program in the country...It was called endless converstaions between youthful energy and passionate experience...
No closed doors, just windows of opportunity for everyone...

And our open-source training programme 'SchoolOfDavid' was amongst the most 'fun-and-play' modules possible in our industry.

5. A while ago I read in BusinessWeek that the metal Tanzanite is rarer than even diamond. As it is mined in just one small dusty town of Tanzania...I may sound utterly soppy and nostalgic, but the spirit of David is a rarer metal than even Tanzanite...

I think I was a David before joining David and believe that all of us(Davids) will retain a part of it where we go next...

It's very easy in today's world to buy technology, sometimes even market shares but it's next to impossible to buy or create BELIEF...

I feel David was a network/ agency with a great belief and energy eco-system...

It's unfortunate that it had an abrupt end. But what is important is that we lived the life of Davids...And hopefully will always retain it...

Where's the Glue around here?

I have often ranted at the lack of disruptive systemic level changes in the Indian advertising business...Be it a culture of open-source creativity or the subject of a creative-planner formalised partnership, Agency 2.0 and more...

Between Prasoon, Balki or Piyush - I have rarely heard them speak about the agencies/ creatives/ creative products of the future...In fact of the trinity, only Prasoon appears to be wired into the new world/ new media space. At least that's what I get from his heavily PRed thoughts...

However, a flat world ensures that one at least knows of the disruptive business models emerging in other parts of the globe. The Glue Society is one of the agencies/ creative fraternity that is at the fore-front of systemic changes in the way they approach the advertising business...

Came across this interview of co-founder Jonathan Kneebone at this website.

Capturing the essence of his thots peppered with a few of my own.

1. The Glue Society is a creative collective based in Sydney and New York comprising of writers, designers, art directors and film directors. Founded in Sydney in 1998 by Jonathan Kneebone and Gary Freedman.

2. "Rather than become an agency with permanent clients, we decided to work project by project. That way we would be able to ensure all the projects we worked on were those we were suited to and interested in".

I feel the planning fraternity in India could possibly adopt this project/ free-lance approach. Not all clients are worth the jet-miles:-) or the long hours...I would be happier building a domain expertise in my interest area rather than head a geographically demarcated client base.

3. "Rather than just come up with ideas then outsource them to other people to make, we decided to combine concept and execution into the same four walls".

Advertising is amongst the only industries where the central product(still the 30 cc commercial) is out-sourced to the producers...I guess its high time the concept and execution be combined together. It will be a viable, nimbler, happier model.

4. "Our catalogue of work tends to attract clients who are similarly interested in breaking down walls and being brave to new opportunities".


This piece of glue society creative is actually a sculpture(installation) at a beach. It depicts melting ice-cream!!

5. "Bad advertising agencies have a tendency to copy the latest fads or mimic other popular things. This simply won't wash anymore. Why would someone spend time with a fake piece of entertainment, when they can spend time with the original. The industry is being forced to change by the realisation that everyone is creative (something we've long believed)."

6. Advertising is like art in some respects - in that there's a hell of a lot of crap and some things that resonate. The difference for me between the two is at the conceptual level. Advertising tends to be where we solve other people's problems. Art tends to be where you get to solve your own.

I wish we had more thinkers like Jon Kneebone & Gary Freedman closer home...

This is the famous Chicken Sandwich world championship work conceptualised by CP+B and directed by the Glue Society!

Open Source Creativity

Was chatting with a fellow planner who said she is 1/4 copy-writer, 3/4 planner...Well I too think/ feel/ believe to be part copy-writer-part planner:-)

This reminded me of some print ads that me and my friend Shantanu had done while at TBWA - the agency where I think I was the most prolific!



Agency : Open Source
Ideators : Shantanu + Manish
Art : Prashant

This is roughly how I think it happened.
1. We were at a TBWA party, getting drunk and bored.
2. The discussion somehow veered around to the subject of 'Tsunami'. A spirited
Shantanu mouthed this nice line - 'Duniya Se Dard Mita De'. We
felt we had to use it somewhere!
3. Next morning, we exictedly plugged it to a creative team.
4. Waited for about a month. Nothing much happened. More dard:-)
5. Then I had this Bollywood idea.
6. Roped in Prashant - the art guy...who gave this look!
7. Then Shantanu left and we waited another 2-3 months before we presented these
ads to the client along with a media plan! Ambrish was a great help!
8. The client liked and approved the ads.
9. Then I quit TBWA.
10. The ads were given a quiet burial...End of 'Open Source'

Shantanu - Apne dard ki kya dava hai??LOL