Early on in my advertising career, I remember when a new project would come down the pipe and my colleagues would run to the nearest design annual for “inspiration.” I didn’t do it for the same reason I stopped reading Hemingway – when I read Hemingway, I start writing like him. Or at least seem to try. To me, influence is more of a liability to true creativity than it is an asset.
This post is out to change how you think of yourself in terms of being a ‘creative’ person. And no, your hair style, body piercings and tattoos don’t make you any more creative than my (dead) grandmother. To prove this, let’s start with basic definitions of words.
Create: 1: to bring into existence <God created the heaven and the earth — Genesis 1:1 (Authorized Version) 2 a: to invest with a new form, office, or rank <was created a lieutenant> b: to produce or bring about by a course of action or behavior <her arrival created a terrible fuss> <create new jobs> 3: cause, occasion <famine creates high food prices> 4 a: to produce through imaginative skill <create a painting> b: design <creates dresses>
Sure, this is just the Merriam Webster dictionary, but I’m writing this post, and by God that’s the first link in google when I look for definitions – so shoot me. Anyway, focus on the #1 definition for a second: “To bring into existence.” Or, to make something totally original or to conjure an idea that’s never been conjured before. They use the example of God – for good reason, since only a God can create something totally original. I think what most of us consider ourselves to be is actually definition #4. Number Four!
Now let’s look at what it means ‘to be’ Creative (as per MW).
Creative: 1: marked by the ability or power to create: given to creating <the creative impulse> 2: having the quality of something created rather than imitated: imaginative <the creative arts> 3: managed so as to get around legal or conventional limits <creative financing>; also: deceptively arranged so as to conceal or defraud <creative accounting>
Most people in advertising believe they’re ‘creative.’ If you do, it’s ok. Even though it’s wrong, the incorrect nomenclature is so embedded in our culture that I don’t think it will ever change. However, I also don’t believe humans are capable of true creativity. And neither should you.
One of the most important books I’ve read which helped me become a serviceable copywriter is Plato’s Republic. Without diving too deep into Plato’s Theory of Forms, just know this – you can’t invent a chair, only a new kind of a chair based on the universal idea (or form) of a chair. When I say chair, you think about the universal idea of a chair, but I guarantee you we’re not thinking about the exact same kind of chair. Which makes a chair less of a thing, and more of an idea. And get this, every word you know has a form attached to it.
Leo Burnett once said, “The secret of all effective advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.”
What Burnett was really saying is that no one is creative – and no one in advertising should aspire to ‘be creative.’ Think about it this way – if you indeed create a new word, how the hell is that going to resonate with your audience if they don’t know the meaning of the word to begin with? It won’t. It will fail. People want familiar. Or at least definable. And anything that is defined is already discovered and therefore neither original nor ‘creative.’
As a copywriter, I’m often asked to string together words and phrases that resonate with a client’s target audience. People call this ability ‘creative.’ I don’t. I’m just a guy who knows how to arrange familiar ideas to make people think differently about something. Which makes the whole ‘think outside of the box’ mantra as ridiculous as the people who use it. But that’s another post.
Read the next post in this series, ‘You’re not Creative Deal with it Part 2’ – and why what we do is more innovative, than creative.
***
Dawn Summers
Aug 13, 2009
Early on in my advertising career, I remember when a new project would come down the pipe…
Um…wait, so what you’re telling me is that when I’ve been saying “down the pike” for my whole life, I’ve been sounding like an idiot?!! Why was I not told??
#crawlsunderrock
Jim Mitchem
Aug 13, 2009
Haha – I had to check myself. But found this: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42452 which pretty much makes both of us correct. Whew. 😉
dawn summers
Aug 13, 2009
Dang. Was about a quarter of the way through my letter to Yale demanding a refund for my degree…oh well. 🙂 #backtowinthelotteryplan
Tony Santos
Aug 13, 2009
Great post. Can’t wait for the conclusion. As my hero Paul Rand said “Don’t try to be original. Just try to be good. ”
Nichole
Aug 13, 2009
This helps me feel better about myself… or at least encourages me to approach the writing process differently.
I recall one of my twitter posts from July when I felt pressured to write in a style that was vastly different from my own – “Stressed that I’ve been given a creative writing assignment. I am not a creative writer.”
That day I doubted my “creative” writing abilities because I felt incapable of imitating the style of the person I was trying to please.
Eventually I completed the task… but only after remembering that end goal was not be “creative” but to craft a message for a specific audience (who was not the person I wanted to make happy).
Looking forward to next week’s post.
Jim Mitchem
Aug 13, 2009
Yeah, I try not to worry about being ‘creative’ but rather being ‘clear.’ All communications have a goal – and it’s never to confuse the audience (unless you work in Hollywood). 😉
Molly Block
Aug 13, 2009
Well said, Jim.
It’s *all* about perception — how people perceive things — isn’t it? 🙂
Bill Free
Aug 14, 2009
Pike or pipe. Both manifestations of the same form.
I was going to meet your Mirriam-Webster and raise you a Shakespeare, observing that writers, when compelled to “be creative,” generally produce sound and fury that signifies nothing. But in fairness to idiots everywhere, I’ll pass.
Your last line nails it for our kind. Looking forward to your next post.
Kim Brater
Aug 14, 2009
Way to pull the rug out.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” ~T.S. Eliot
@KimBrater
Kat Jaibur
Aug 14, 2009
I think you’ve done a very good job at creating controversy. Not to be confused with innovating it.
Jim Mitchem
Aug 14, 2009
You’ve been reading Aristotle haven’t you Molly? 😉
Jim Mitchem
Aug 14, 2009
Really glad you didn’t bring Shakespeare in here man.
Jim Mitchem
Aug 14, 2009
I’m not going to pretend to understand what that Eliot quote means, Kim. What’s with all the poets? hehe
Jim Mitchem
Aug 14, 2009
You’re right, Kat, there is a context from which there is no better definition than ‘creating’ or ‘creative’ or ‘create’ – but that’s because we’re so entrenched in those words. Even Merriam Webster recognizes that our pop culture definitions of ‘creativity’ exists, which is why those iterations are listed as subsequent definitions of these words. I mean, definition #4 under ‘Create’ is exactly how we see ourselves. But still, it’s #4! It’s as if they ‘had’ to include this definition because of how liberally it’s used in modern culture.
Terryl
Aug 14, 2009
This is great. Jim, I’ve never read any of your stuff before, and I am banging my head against the desk, yelling, “WHY??”
I love it. This article is going to be throwing itself all over my mind like a mad man in a padded cell.
Jim Mitchem
Feb 11, 2020
Thanks.
edward boches
Aug 14, 2009
Words become their contemporary meaning. So creative and create have become a description for what it is that people in our business do. There are many ways to talk about this version of “create.” Generate attention getting ideas, provoke, interest, surprise, delight. So maybe we don’t create and we’re not creative. But hopefully we do something that is always new, fresh, unexpected and makes people ask, “wow, how did they come up with that one.” Otherwise we may as well be in the recycling business.
greg stene
Aug 15, 2009
Hi.
I really haven’t had enough coffee to be writing about this, but here goes. After just completing a book on creativity, I have to completely disagree with Jim. He and I have had this little intellectual fist-city go-around before, but I don’t think either of us has quite so explicitly stated our position as what he’s done in his note here.
In research into advertising (and “general” creativity), there are two parameters we use to determine the creativity level of a “product” (ad, video, etc.) The parameters have little to do with Webster’s.
First, we look at whether the idea is original. Other terms used are new, novel, etc. This is the one most of us copywriters are familiar with (I used to be a copywriter before I fell even further on the evolutionary ladder and began teaching at university).
The second characteristic we look at in determining creativity is whether the product is relevant. Other terms used are useful, meaningful, etc.
So a creative product needs to be both original, and relevant to the problem addressed.
We have a problem with this. I, especially, have a problem with this. Who determines the degree of originality? For example, if the idea came to a copywriter in L.A. for the first time this weekend, is that an original idea … or is it not original because the idea’s already being used in NYC?
And, of course, what is relevant? Does the idea have to solve a marketing problem, or in advertising, does it merely have to resonate with the target? Or is it a matter of selling the benefit the account manager/client want to send, regardless of whether it in fact reaches to the needs of the target?
A lot of questions. But it all pretty well kills off the idea of a Webster’s definition being enough in considering creativity. The more I got into my research for this book (shameless plug, without providing the title), the more I realized how huge and complex an issue this idea is.
We tend to treat the idea of creativity without the gravity it deserves.
But to get back to Jim’s original note … can we create something original? You bet your ass we can.
Sure, any variation on a chair is going to still be a chair. But that’s merely playing into old conceptions of the development of ideation as being based on what has come before. And the hopeless postmodern proposition that it’s all been done before.
However, the notion of saying anything that happens is the result of what came before is so general in its statement, it has no meaning. No sense of explaining anything.
Yes, Subservient Chicken (http://www.bk.com/en/us/campaigns/subservient-chicken.html) and the idea of unfriending someone in your Facebook account in order to get a free burger may have somehow been built on the fact that something came before it, but the expressions of these ideas, the very ideas themselves are so original and useful, they can only be considered truly creative.
There is nothing any of us can point to that would dictate the realization of those ideas.
But to go deeper into the original problem …
Why is it important to consider the idea that copywriters can actually create something new? Because in my research,I’ve been sort of stunned to discover some actual findings that strongly suggest something most of us creatives have only believed in before, and had no proof to point to.
Creative advertising works better than non-creative advertising.
Yeah, we all knew that, but it was just a matter of belief on our parts. We now seem to have proof, and that makes the idea of creativity, creative thinking, and producing a creative ad or video or whatever more important than ever.
We need to go back to the two-part definition of creativity for a second here. It has to be original and useful.
I’m suggesting that if we create an idea that is original in our eyes, and in the eyes of the reader/viewer/target, and that it address the person’s need concerning the product or service in some appropriate way … we have created an original concept.
It doesn’t matter what the universe may already know.
As a former creative in the ad game as a copywriter, I can’t imagine going through my professional life believing I can only replicate that which has come before. I see audiences changing, I see new products and services, I see the need to not sell either product or service, rather engage the target in an experience (Skittles). I see new worlds unfolding.
I do not see a world which has come before me to replicate. I see new opportunities to create original and effective advertising.
And, with the research findings showing creativity works better than a non-creative approach, I find it my responsibility as a provider of services to my client to develop creative concepts to sell, rather than end up resigned to produce familiar ideas.
Finally, Jim and I have known each other for years, and we greatly respect each other. Please understand that he would in no way take this as a personal attack. He’s too smart a guy for that. And, too creative to ever replicate that which has come before. Sorry about that last point, Jim.
greg stene
Jim Mitchem
Aug 15, 2009
Thanks Terryl. Glad I could help stir something. Welcome to my brain. 😉
Jim Mitchem
Aug 15, 2009
Thanks Edward. I think the word should be innovative. But we have manipulated creativity to mean what we think it means – and the best we can come up with is ‘Creative.’ I just happen to think no human being is capable of true creativity. I used to say, “the most creative thing I’ve ever done is have children because they’re totally unique. However, they’re not original (kids are born around the world every day) and they’re not all that unique since every cell in their body is a DNA map of mine and my wife’s family going back, well, till forever.
Obviously I’m not saying we should recycle but rather than beating ourselves up to come up with that Eureka! moment for something ‘truly original’ – relax. Connect. Think about how the majority of the audience thinks about a thing, and then go to the outer edge of reason to discover the little things that connect people to ideas in different (new) ways. I don’t hate the term ‘Creative’ – I just think it’s entirely overused by people who aren’t so much creative as they are innovative.
Jim Mitchem
Aug 15, 2009
You’re wrong, I’m right – so there.
Christopher Lafond
Mar 26, 2010
You’re basing your entire argument on the first definition you found from an undeniably subjective source.
Christopher Lafond
Mar 26, 2010
Ooo! Ooo! Actually you’re “proving” you’re argument with the above said.
Christopher Lafond
Mar 26, 2010
I guess I’m the only one who’s shooting?
Christopher Lafond
Mar 26, 2010
Bang.
Jim Mitchem
Mar 26, 2010
Yeah…that’s original.
Matt
Aug 10, 2010
I didn’t have the motivation to read his argument, if any, due to the length. So I agree, you are right. 🙂
Michelle
Aug 17, 2010
I’ve been following you on Twitter and somehow haven’t stopped by your blog in a while.. travesty? I think so. Clear proof why.
I disagree, though. You are creative and this post shows that. It takes creativity to turn a difficult task into something simple, yet elegant.
Writing a blog is not as easy as it seems, you have to have the idea, think of the design, do all of the prep work, to not even mention the time you’ve spent to gather your following that has currently left 26 (some very long) comments here.
You have created something here. And hence are creative 🙂
Best, Michelle
David
Aug 17, 2010
Both Kubrick and Fellini rarely watched films for this reason. They felt that watching films as a creative person would influence their own work.
I’m glad they abstained….nice piece by the way.
cheers
Jim Mitchem
Aug 17, 2010
Thanks Michelle, that’s very flattering – but really, those are all just learned traits. Nothing truly original about it at all. The best I can do is know a lot of stuff other people have helped refine over time, and then put that stuff into new relationships so people think about the stuff in new ways. *sigh* – nothing creative about that.
Jim Mitchem
Aug 17, 2010
Thanks for the comment David. I swear I thought I was going fucking crazy with the osmosis thing. But it’s true. I’m a very weak-minded person and am subject to even the most subtle influence.
My novel – Minor King
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