Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.
-Anton Ego, in Pixar's Ratatouille
What unique traits reside in highly successful creative people? There must be something special that Picasso, Madonna, Yo-Yo Ma, Arthur Miller and others all possess that the rest of us do not...
Scientists have studied this for decades but they've largely been unable to come up with something concrete. There's no specific Myers-Briggs personality type, family background or different brain chemistry that separates highly successful creative people from everyone else. Yes, they tend to be a little more open to trying new things than the average person but that doesn't over-index to any significant degree.
So what is it? There must be something.
Turns out there is one thing: Grit. And if you're as curious about that as I am, or believe in that as strongly as I do, then you can read all about it in Jonah Lehrer's new book, Imagine. Successful creative people possess the powerful combination of having more grit and persistence than their competitors.
Jonah articulates this well:
"The reality of the creative process is that it often requires persistence, the ability to stare at a problem until it makes sense. It's forcing oneself to pay attention, to write all night and then fix those words in the morning. It's sticking with a poem until it's perfect; refusing to quit on a math question; working until the cut of a dress is just right. The answer won't arrive suddenly, in a flash of light. Instead it will be revealed slowly, gradually emerging after great effort."
Answers that arrive suddenly when the mind is relaxed (such as in the shower or on a road trip) is what gives someone insight and clarity. But what really matters is the hard work after that. Yes, one has to have the skill but it's talent plus grit that equals creative success. And if you believe Jonah, as I do, the higher the level of one's grit, the greater the likelihood of success.
This goes for creativity as well as for most professional endeavours. Sports fans know this from following the NFL Combine, an annual event where potential college recruits show up to partake in all sorts of physical activity in front of NFL scouts--from the high jump to the forty yard dash and beyond.
What's been observed throughout the years is that there's very little correlation between success at the NFL Combine to success in the NFL. Physical outperformance alone doesn't cut it. Take Tom Brady. There are definitely more athletic quarterbacks than Tom, but he's a champion because of talent + grit. And it's always worth remembering that Tom Brady was drafted in the 6th round of the 2000 NFL draft as the 199th pick.
So the secret's out on why agencies are built the way they are. For many years when people in other industries walked through good ad agencies and design firms an interesting discussion would typically follow about the space itself... Why is it built so differently than other offices?
There are three things that can impede creative thinking at work. And a creative company is constructed--from the building to the culture to the day-to-day processes--to help navigate them. The better these impediments are managed, the greater the odds of creative success.
Finding the Moment of Insight.
Gladwell wrote once that insight seekers need to determine if they're solving a puzzle or a mystery. The difference? A puzzle is a business problem with missing pieces (e.g. go field more research) where a mystery has all the information there it just needs to be looked at from a renewed perspective. Agencies solve both but mysteries are more frequent.
It's worth mentioning that mysteries are often the most difficult creative problems to solve because at first they seem impossible. How will it be different this time? But a moment of insight changes all of that. Like the moment a 3M engineer figured out the use of an extremely weak glue (while sitting in church) which led to the production of Post-It Notes.
Insights often come in the strangest places, don't they? In the shower, walking the dog, making breakfast in the morning. Basically doing things that aren't related to a job description. Why does that work? The answer apparently lies in science. The moment before an insight appears a part of our brain, called the superior anterior temporal gyrus (or the "aSTG"), exhibits a spike in activity and this region in the right hemisphere excels at drawing together distantly related information. And it turns out there are certain things that make people more likely to have an insight...
One study found exposure to non-related humorous videos increased insight success rates by 20%. Another study found that alcohol consumption actually helped with solving complex word problems.
What explains the creative benefits of relaxation and booze? The answer involves the surprising advantage of not paying attention. Although we live in an age that worships focus—we are always forcing ourselves to concentrate—this approach can inhibit the imagination.
And this is why relaxation helps: It isn't until we're soothed in the shower or distracted by the stand-up comic that we're able to turn the spotlight of attention inward, eavesdropping on all those random associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain's right hemisphere. When we need an insight, those associations are often the source of the answer.
So why do places like Deutsch offer pool tables and Google have ping pong? (Aside from creating a more fun work environment.) For just this reason.
Keep On Going.
It's hard to find more passion than someone who keeps turning and churning creative ideas in search of the answer. Sometimes one has to watch the hours--you're intensely working on a solution on Tuesday afternoon and suddenly it's 7:30 at night. (Boston Consulting Group has set up alerts that when employees consistently hit over 60 hours/week their managers are alerted to help avoid burn out.)
But creative people know when they're close to the answer... They just may not know how close. Einstein famously remarked that "it's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." Creative companies have to feed this ability. Part of this is having a safe place to work late into the night without worry. Another part is allotting enough time and alertness to do the creative necessary justice. Drake Cooper keeps the now-famous Red Bull fridge stocked for us all.
And then there's fear. As legendary creative Harvey Gabor says midway through his Re:Brief ad: "The fear will make you work harder because you've gotta present stuff to the client... the neurotic parts (of the job) make you work much harder."
It's that sort of mentality that often leads to greatness. There's the famous example of Milton Glaser whose original cursive "I Love New York" slogan was approved and ready to print but he just wasn't satisfied. So one day he drew this:
And then of course there's Helmut Krone who would toil in his office for hours and hours at DDB to produce beautiful, unmatched art direction during his time:
When you're close to greatness, always keep going. It has a funny way of not being there again in the morning.
New Raw Materials.
"Creativity is just connecting things." That was Steve Jobs' approach. It's true--the best ideas often come from far off, otherwise unrelated things.
In 2010, Newsweek produced an excellent piece on creativity in which they said:
The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).
They're right. And to succeed creative companies have to be the ultimate space of openness and convergence. All thought is allowed and you have to let those raw materials inside, like what DTAC has done in their Thailand office:
And like Melbourne's ANZ Centre:
It certainly doesn't need to look that pretty but the more we associate ourselves with things outside of our immediate area of specialty the more innovative we become. This probably seems intuitive but it's backed up by research. Consider a recent study of 766 Stanford MBA graduates turned entrepreneurs--those with the most diverse friendships scored three times higher on metrics of innovation.
These three types of creativity--Finding Moments of Insight, Keep On Going and New Raw Materials--all live and thrive at creative companies.
And now, since we're at it and all, there's a final thing not in the article that must be included:
Teamwork & Collaboration.
In July of last year, the same author of the NY Times piece wrote a post surrounding The Auteur Myth--the idea that true creative greatness is rarely done alone:
I certainly don’t mean to disparage the genius of Hitchcock or Steve Jobs or to defend uninspired data driven design. But it’s also important to remember that nobody creates Vertigo or the iPad by themselves; even auteurs need the support of a vast system. When you look closely at auteurs, what you often find is that their real genius is for the assembly of creative teams, trusting the right people with the right tasks at the right time. Sure, they make the final decisions, but they are choosing between alternatives created by others. When we frame auteurs as engaging in the opposite of collaboration, when we obsess over Hitchcock’s narrative flair but neglect Lehman’s script, or think about Jobs’ aesthetic but not Ive’s design (or the design of those working for Ives), we are indulging in a romantic vision of creativity that rarely exists. Even geniuses need a little help.
There it is. Four things to foster creativity.
So now everyone knows why good agencies are built the way they are.
The always entertaining Letters of Note has just published a letter that David Ogilvy wrote to a Mr. Ray Calt that explains the process the ad legend went through when writing an ad. It's a terrific read. Thanks JB. Writing creative briefs can be similar on a few points...
April 19, 1955
Dear Mr. Calt:
On March 22nd you wrote to me asking for some notes on my work habits as a copywriter. They are appalling, as you are about to see:
1. I have never written an advertisement in the office. Too many interruptions. I do all my writing at home.
2. I spend a long time studying the precedents. I look at every advertisement which has appeared for competing products during the past 20 years.
3. I am helpless without research material—and the more "motivational" the better.
4. I write out a definition of the problem and a statement of the purpose which I wish the campaign to achieve. Then I go no further until the statement and its principles have been accepted by the client.
5. Before actually writing the copy, I write down every concievable fact and selling idea. Then I get them organized and relate them to research and the copy platform.
6. Then I write the headline. As a matter of fact I try to write 20 alternative headlines for every advertisement. And I never select the final headline without asking the opinion of other people in the agency. In some cases I seek the help of the research department and get them to do a split-run on a battery of headlines.
7. At this point I can no longer postpone the actual copy. So I go home and sit down at my desk. I find myself entirely without ideas. I get bad-tempered. If my wife comes into the room I growl at her. (This has gotten worse since I gave up smoking.)
8. I am terrified of producing a lousy advertisement. This causes me to throw away the first 20 attempts.
9. If all else fails, I drink half a bottle of rum and play a Handel oratorio on the gramophone. This generally produces an uncontrollable gush of copy.
10. The next morning I get up early and edit the gush.
11. Then I take the train to New York and my secretary types a draft. (I cannot type, which is very inconvenient.)
12. I am a lousy copywriter, but I am a good editor. So I go to work editing my own draft. After four or five editings, it looks good enough to show to the client. If the client changes the copy, I get angry—because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.
Altogether it is a slow and laborious business. I understand that some copywriters have much greater facility.
Being able to articulate something perfectly is a skill. And it's a wonderful moment when we hear it being done. You know the occasion; someone summarizes a person or thing in one word or a series of concise sentences and just nails it perfectly.
The interesting thing about perfect articulation is that it occurs only in two situations: spontaneousness or well-crafted thought. The former requires a perfect understanding of the subject at-hand usually gained from years of affiliation while the latter comes with lots of writing and re-writing in a focused amount of time. I liken this to writing the truest sentence possible as Hemingway always tried to do.
This month Pearl Jam Twenty releases. Directed by Cameron Crowe, it's a documentary about the career of Pearl Jam. As a fan of the band, proud member of Gen X and purveyor of all things Pacific Northwest, I'm excited to see it.
An article with Crowe in this month's Vanity Fair asked him about what Eddie Vedder brought to the band once he joined. His choice of words made me think about the skill of perfect articulation.
VF: Why did you go back to the band's beginnings as Mother Love Bone with their first lead singer, Andrew Wood?
Cameron Crowe: I wanted to tell that story of lightning striking twice. Nobody believed there was going to be a future for those guys after Andy Wood died, and it's kind of a rock miracle that Eddie Vedder--who was living in California at the time--sent an audition tape.
VF: What do you think Eddie brought to the band?
Cameron Crowe: He brought promise, and also a challenge to their Seattle, set-in-their-ways community. Eddie, as a guy, wants to fit in, but he also wants to tilt against the windmills. That combination of push and pull really helped them. Andy was ready to play arenas with no guilt, and I think Eddie wanted to stay close to fans and build it slowly. He was both an insider and an outsider.
[ Pictured above: Crowe and Vedder in Italy in '93. ]
When it comes to Account Planning one of the best blogs right now is Martin Weigel's Canalside View. The research and affiliated cultural mentions that go into each post are most impressive. Be sure to check out this one: defining better problems.
Every organization should spend more time defining problems. According to a study cited on Martin's post, campaigns that set hard objectives based on business or behavior results enjoy an effectiveness success rate of 50%. Conversely, campaigns that were based on soft goals, such as attitudinal changes, had a success rate of only 11%.
Defining better problems upfront is the key. And to do this, great insight can be found in the post. I particularly liked seeing the CIA Phoenix checklist.
Had a flat tire the other day. Apparently there was a small, headless nail that I ran over on some road that was lodged in the tire that kept deflating it. But I couldn't see the nail or the hole. So I took the car into Les Schwab. They removed the tire in question and they couldn't see the hole either. So they did something highly scientific... they submerged the tire in water and looked for the bubbles. In 5 seconds they had it and fixed the tire. (For free. Which is one of the many reasons to love Schwab.)
It's hard to imagine that there will ever be a better, more efficient, more cost-effective technology for finding a hole in a tire than a tank of water. It's un-glamourous and definitely lo-fi but it's a great solution.
Sometimes we have the right solution already. Despite all the fancy screens and the seduction of digital, there are times when the wisest thing to do is to simply realize, "yep, that works great," and move on to something that's truly broken or highly inefficient.
It's important not to casually and slowly meander away from the great stuff that affects you. Which is easy to do, of course, with all the good stuff that also finds you. There's lots of good stuff, which gets mixed in with the great stuff. Kind of like how Tom Junod reminds us that we live in the age of the good song.
So here are five great things particularly worth spending time with.
Next time you're stuck on a problem perhaps consult Oblique Strategies. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created a collection of remarks designed to help break through deadlocks and dilemmas. You can also buy them as playing cards.
Here's a great piece about John Jay. Thanks Mison. Particularly noteworthy are the 10 lessons for young designers, which are pretty much 10 lessons for everyone in this business...
One of the reasons this translates so effectively is the use of white space. And the reason that the use of white space works so effectively is due to something called The Gestalt Principle which was identified in the 1920s. It refers to theories of visual perception and how people tend to organize visual elements into groups or "unified wholes" when certain design principles are applied. Fascinating to review or reacquaint yourself with.
