"I’ve learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes
a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.” -- Leo Burnett

On Creativity

The Creativity module, third and last module of the Marcom Engine planning process, consists of two key components: core intelligence & theme/image standards. This is the mixing bowl where the ingredients provided by the audit and strategy modules become core intelligence, and are blended with raw creative power to produce THE BIG IDEA (lightning bolt) which is the source of all communications energy and the basis for our theme/image standards.

Probing the Mystery of Creativity
The creative process is launched by mixing core intelligence with text and image (words and pictures) to populate the Marcom Engine with BIG IDEA elements. Most marcom graphics are too complex. Simple icons work best. The generally accepted creative process follows these steps.

• PREPARATION (inform) Mastery of subject matter
• INCUBATION (explore) Relax, Free Association, Visualization, Scanning
• ILLUMINATION () Lightning bolt arrives if conditions and environment are OK
• ELABORATION (judge) Return to conscious state, arrange, expand, edit
• VERIFICATION (build) Test, refine, submit for approval

What’s the makeup of “creative” people?
Because creativity is rearranging existing knowledge, you must be intimately familiar with many different disciplines. You must possess ONE of the following two sets of personal traits: wholesome, confident, perceptive, charismatic -- or-- driven, uneasy, remote, sometimes neurotic. Plus you must possess ALL the following character traits: * a tolerance of ambiguity, disorder, tension, and conflict * a desire to create new order from disorder * an ability to stand fast with personal visions and ideas in the face of group pressure. Studies indicate that creativity and brilliant intellect do not fit snugly together ... creative persons have moderate to high intelligence but not many persons of phenomenally high IQs or memory are highly creative.

Why does the Marcom Engine preach integrated marketing communications?
Because repetition of emotion evoking messages is the only known way to assure penetration of the belief clusters that serve as cognitive dissonance filters. Because message retention is dependent on the use of a variety of input vehicles. And because pictures are far superior to words when it comes to altering the brain chemistry required of both penetration and retention. ...so if you're contemplating a boring visual, or an all copy message you're in trouble.

The challenge for creativity is to overpower, or alter, the belief cluster (sometimes referred to as the bullshit factor). The real target of our efforts is not defined demographically (statistics), or psychographically (lifestyles) or even syncrographically (timing)...the target is the brain...and the challenge is to change attitudes, which in turn change behavior. Attitude changes occur through changes in brain chemistry ... so think of yourselves as chemists... working on penetration and retention. The paradox: The quirky unknown doesn't stick unless you successfully help your reader relate it to the known. The four most feared words in marketing communications? I DON'T BELIEVE YOU!

GREAT THOUGHTS ON CREATIVITY BY GIANTS
OF THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY.

This contribution comes from Tom Hall of Ogilvy & Mather

BEWARE OF TAMING THE LIGHTNING OF A GREAT IDEA
Lightning is a metaphor for two contrasting experiences: sudden illumination and sudden death. Ben Franklin tamed the sudden death aspect. He gave us lightning rods so that we could admire the light without fearing the consequences.

Sudden illumination is not a new phenomenon to marketers. Many a competitor has grabbed the lead with a brilliant marketing ploy but more often brilliant ideas die with barely a whimper because of human lightning rods ... people with a knack for grounding great ideas ... people uncomfortable with change/new ideas... people who fear a burst of inspiration will wipe out the way they've been doing things, people who don't want the bright light of your BIG IDEA to make theirs look dim by comparison.

Be patient with lightning rods. And be prepared to use the irrefutable logic made possible by the MARCOM ENGINE.

WHY OUTSOURCE YOUR CREATIVE STRATEGY?
Charlotte Beers of Ogilvy and Mather said it best in this excerpt from a speech she gave many years ago... "What do ad agencies do that's unique?"

“Let me suggest that the people in advertising are deliberately, joyfully, urgently different from our clients, not better, different ... We do offer something to clients they can't get elsewhere. We are people you could never hire, for ideas you could never have.

Conversely, our clients have a kind of mastery we don't have. They take risks, have great drive, thoroughness to make it happen, ensure against failure, scope and scale for our ideas.

We match mastery with inspiration ... all the "I" words; ideas, imagination, insight, and intuition. If clients are in charge of the linear logical world of common sense, we are responsible for uncommon sense. In thousands of offices all over the country, clients are saying in meetings with their agency - Well, I hadn't thought of it that way... Clients see people as consumers first, we "see" consumers as people first. The most successful clients, the most profitable clients have a profound appreciation of our differences.

Companies organize people, product and profit. Agencies organize ideas. It is the duty of the former to protect the power of the latter. It does take a different culture to nourish idea people, we need a place where we can entertain visions, a place where we can keep fantasy, ridicule and doubt alive and well. It's passion that makes an ad agency.”