Creativity: the holy grail of every ad campaign. The esoteric fairy dust that all marketers long to sprinkle onto their work – if only they knew how to get hold of it.
We think of the creative process as the result of some mysterious, innate talent. The very word ‘creativity’ conjures up the image of painters like Picasso and Da Vinci, who we suppose were blessed with the skill to generate their masterpieces. We imagine Warhol and Cezanne – driven to instil a mystical aura into their art.
The truth is – creativity is rarely the materialisation of some divinely inspired gift. Nor is it applied to produce something elusive and intangible. It’s much more mundane and practical than that. Understanding the difference between the perception of how creativity evolves and the way it actually develops can help us get more immediate access to it and better results from it.
Creativity requires action
The Eureka moment makes it easy to think that creative ideas suddenly appear from nowhere. All you have to do is wait, and if you’re lucky a spark of genius will come to you. But the truth is that creativity can’t rely on such passivity. Instead it thrives on activity.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s creative talent was a direct result of his relentless pursuit of knowledge. His 7,000 page notebook is a testament to his insatiable appetite to grasp the natural world – a compilation of self imposed tasks like understanding the measurement of Milan and its suburbs; getting a master of hydraulics to explain how to repair a lock; and describing the tongue of the woodpecker. Da Vinci was a prime example of his own teaching: “people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
Why is action so important for creativity? Simply put, creative ideas occur when the brain makes connections; combining existing pieces of information in a new way. The more information available, the more opportunity for creative ideas to occur. This is why the most creative people spend lots of time reading, exploring and observing. Even if these activities don’t provide anything that’s immediately useful, they build a repository of material for future creative ideas to spring from.
This desire for discovery also helped to shape the world’s most valuable business. In 1972, Steve Jobs’ curiosity compelled him to take a calligraphy class at college. He did this despite knowing it wouldn’t count towards his final degree, or thinking it would have any practical application in his life. But as Jobs writes, “ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me.” His knowledge helped create the Mac’s slick, user-friendly typography – an integral part of its mass-market appeal.
Creativity borrows
Creativity is synonymous with originality: producing brand new work unlike anything that came before it. But, in reality the creative process doesn’t reject existing ideas – it reshapes them.
Cubism is considered one of the most innovative art movements of the 20th century. Its focus on geometric shapes and two dimensional perspectives redefined how paintings could depict reality. But the radical brainchild of Pablo Picasso was a clear reformulation of a movement that came decades before: Post-Impressionism.
For instance, the deconstruction of shapes into precise angles and distinct areas can be seen in the work of Paul Cezanne as early as 1885. Several years later, Cezanne used Bibemus Quarry to create the illusion of an object seen from multiple perspectives; challenging the traditional notion of singular perspectives that became a defining feature of Cubism. Picasso openly acknowledged the influence of Cezanne on his work, describing him as ‘my one and only master’.
It’s important to point out that Picasso never copied Cezanne. Copying is a direct imitation – it requires no imagination and leads to nothing new. Instead Picasso borrowed; using existing ideas and building on them, taking them in a different direction to create something new. A process found in the very best creative work. As film director Jean-Luc Godard said: “it’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”
This has important lessons for marketing. If creativity borrows from existing concepts, then marketers’ desire for total originality seems misguided. Rather than trying to uncover a brand’s ‘unique selling proposition’ or an ad’s ‘groundbreaking big idea’, they’d have more success putting a fresh twist on a familiar formula.
After all, some of the most successful adverts are based on recycled insights. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign was praised for shattering beauty stereotypes in advertising, and contributed to a doubling in sales. Yet its core insight is remarkably similar to the one found in a Body Shop campaign that ran seven years earlier: ‘there are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do.’ Deliberate or not, the brilliance of Real Beauty was combining this insight with an unconventional execution – showing real people rather than mannequins. In other words, building on what exists to create something new.
Creativity is commercial
It’s tempting to think that creativity exists in a world removed from money, where it’s valued purely for its mysterious artistic appeal, not the profit it makes. But the most successful artists have always considered creativity’s ability to pull in a profit.
Andy Warhol was famous for his obsession with money, once claiming that “good business is the best art.” Much of his celebrated work was centred on consumer products like Coca Cola and Campbell’s soup (a painting which sold for $12 million). In other paintings, he made his fixation with money even clearer; laying out 192 one dollar bills next to each other, and showing nothing more than a stylised Dollar Sign – the ultimate symbol of a consumerist culture of which Warhol was a key part.
Centuries before Warhol, Peter Paul Rubens was as much an entrepreneur as he was an artist. He built a grand studio to showcase his creativity to nobility and art collectors. And he was one of the first artists to gain access to a copyright; ensuring his work was legally protected and the profit went directly to him. It is no coincidence that the Dutch artist established his life in Venice – the financial centre of the world in the 16th century.
Though it might seem distasteful, this preoccupation with money serves a good purpose – money gives artists more freedom to work. It allows them to buy better equipment, rent bigger studios, and hire more assistants to help them. Without money, artists can’t do what matters most: the work.
In the same way creative painting helps to make artists richer, creative advertising works to make brands more profitable. Yes, ads can be designed beautifully. They can entertain and tell a compelling story. But they only succeed by encouraging consumers to buy the brand, in the short and long term.
Decades of research from the IPA makes a clear case for creativity: creatively awarded campaigns are more commercially successful than non awarded campaigns. They are more likely to generate very strong fame effects – getting shared and talked about in public. As a result, they are more likely to drive hard business outcomes: penetration and market share growth.
At a time when marketing budgets are under intense scrutiny, it’s important to remember that advertising is an investment designed to provide a return. This is what creativity helps to do, and how it should be judged. As ever, ad man Jeremy Bullmore put it so eloquently: separating creativity in ads from their commercial success is like “honouring a bridge for its beauty while closing it to traffic for safety reasons.”
Celebrating creativity
Despite its mythical and magical status, creativity is surprisingly logical. It is sparked by hard work and determination to discover new things. It frequently borrows from other people’s ideas. And it is applied in the pursuit of making money.
But this isn’t a reason to look down on creativity. In fact, it should make us celebrate it more. After all, this strangely practical trait is responsible for art that is cherished across the globe. Creativity has produced cultural artefacts that have been passed down through generations and will be remembered for many more. In sum, creativity is built on ordinary habits, yet leads to extraordinary results – that is what makes creativity truly special.
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