A Few Strong Words…

If you have ever researched “setting goals” (as many of us tend to do this time of year…) you have likely come upon the SMART method: setting Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Related goals. It is a good, solid, logical approach – and therein lies its greatest flaws.

First, do you really know what your goals are? For example, you could be broad and say “to make more money this year”. But have you examined why you want to make more money? Is it because you foresee some big expenses down the road (kids’ education funds, retirement, new car), or because you want to worry less about money? Maybe you simply see your income as one measure of your success – the more money you make, the more successful you are.

Second, have you taken enough time to actually envision these goals? If you are a copywriter, you might automatically think that you want more clients because that would translate into more money (if money is your goal…) However think that through. Is it possible to make more money with fewer clients? The answer is yes, if you find the right ones. So would you like fewer clients and less variety, or more clients and more variety while making your million?

What are your goals, really?

Take a moment to re-evaluate your goals. And make sure they are your goals, not someone else’s idea of what someone in your position should be achieving. If you have a broad goal like the one mentioned above, try to determine exactly what it is you are looking for: freedom, diversity, less stress, less work, more work, etc.

Then open a new document or get a pen and paper and try this simple exercise. Brainstorm with yourself and find all the possible ways of reaching that goal. No answer is silly or ridiculous. Do not censor yourself at this point.

My Goal This Year:

Avoid Work/Family Conflicts To Spend More Time With the Kids

Ways to Get There:

• Quit working
• Home school
• Buy a boat and sail around the world with them
• Get rid of the TV
• Meet them at the bus after school and go for a walk every day
• Kick the soccer ball with them every day
• Let the grass grow an extra week
• Rearrange my schedule so that I’m working more when they are sleeping or at school
• …
• …

Okay, once you have a sizable list, you can start scratching out ideas. Quitting work, for example, isn’t feasible for most of us. Neither is buying a sailboat and exploring the seven seas or opening our own home school.

But rearranging your work schedule – that’s an interesting one. Making an effort to be there every day after school (much like booking a meeting with a client) is also a doable thing. You might be able to pull it off better by scheduling some work time after the kids go to bed…

Pull out and do a macro view as well. How will working at night affect your relationship with your spouse or significant other? Is this something that he/she can get on board with as well? Will being out of the office during some “normal office hours” impact your business at all? Will the path to this goal conflict with your other goals? (Prioritizing your goals will help you make decisions here.)

Viewing your goals from different angles

The point is to get creative with your goal setting. Brainstorm with yourself, dig deep to find out what your true goals are, and envision many different paths of getting there instead of trying to find the “best” path the first time out.

And do plan for failure. If you are human (and if you are reading this, you likely are) there will be days when you don’t want to work towards your goal. You might give up on the whole strategy altogether. It might help to write down the reasons why you want to reach this goal, and refer to it when you are feeling less than motivated.

Re-evaluate your strategy on a regular basis. Even the most creative ideas can end up flopping when you put them in practice. Be open to the possibility that you’ll hit a dead end and will have to find a new path to your goals.

This isn’t an either/or proposition. You can use this method to solidify your goals in your mind, and then use the SMART method to logically plan how you are going to get there. After all, critical evaluation is crucial in any creative process – just let your muse talk first.

~Graham

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I’m not one of those who enjoys wrapping presents. Yes, I try to do a good job, and yes, I enjoy giving presents.  But the actual wrapping part I can take or leave.

Once in a while, I find myself wrapping an extra large gift for my wife like a pottery wheel or some other big box. Not only is it difficult to physically move the box around to wrap it, but the paper is often not big enough or it rips under the weight. Very frustrating.

Well, here’s an idea I hit upon: wrap it with fabric. I trot out to the fabric store (I’m very well acquainted with their locatations, having dropped off my wife there on a couple of occasions…) and get a couple of metres of the stuff. Something with a nice print, even Christmasy if they have it, in a bold red or green or blue.

Once home, I simply place the box in the centre of the fabric, draw up the sides, and tie it all together with a length of thick ribbon (which you can also find at the fabric store). It’s fast, less frustrating, and still makes a huge impact.

Most importantly, no ripped paper, so that your surprise remains a surprise until Christmas morning. Plus, if she likes to sew, she can also use the fabric. The ultimate “green” wrapping paper!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a very enjoyable Gift Wrapping Season to you!

~Graham

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This past weekend I covered a story about a local charitable organization giving money to a gym that helps underprivileged youth. The organization had one of those big novelty cheques, and wanted to have a picture in the newspaper of them presenting the cheque to the gym founder.

Unfortunately, the paper shies away from pictures like this. I think the organizations love it because it is proof of the good work they do in the community. But from the newspaper’s point of view, well, there are only so many pictures of giant novelty cheques you can print before it gets boring for you and the reader.

In short, it’s just not novel any more.

What the photographer did instead was set up a very fresh and interesting shot. One thing the gym is known for is teaching boxing skills to the kids. There is a full-size boxing ring in the gym complete with gloves, shoes, headgear, and the whole bit. So the photographer had one of the organization members put on a pair of gloves and start sparring with the gym founder, with the other members looking on from the background.

The picture, which you can see here, is infinitely more interesting than five guys handing another guy a big cheque. In the end, it will draw more readers into the story, benefiting both the organization and the youth gym.

So what is the moral of my story?

Let’s start at the beginning. Before you can get your story in the newspaper, you need to attract the media attention. Say you sent out a press release stating “Local Organization to Present Giant Cheque to Youth Gym”. You may get some press there, or you may not, depending on the organization. However they will not be clamouring to your door to see yet another giant cheque changing hands.

But suppose instead you led with something like “It’s a Knock-Out! Jim’s Gym to Show President the Ropes in Boxing Demonstration and Donation Ceremony”. Now there is a bit more of a story with a great photo op. Add something like all who attend will also get a free boxing lesson, and you’ll generate more interest.

Of course, this exact scenario won’t work for everyone. But it helps to consider what you do, and how you can make that exciting for the newspaper. Get creative and make it an event, not just a ceremony.

Newspapers want to add colourful stories to their pages. Give them an interesting angle and create the story for them, and you’ll be more likely to get them to your door.

Have you come across any interesting press releases or other media event? Let us know in the comments below!

~Graham

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Here’s an ad that caught my eye not too long ago. However, as I am beginning to realize, it did not catch my nose (a fact that I may be glad of…)

On the surface, this starts off as a great idea. Essentially, the ad is a plastic or vinyl sticker of a cup of Folger’s coffee that is placed over a manhole cover. Holes are punched through the sticker to allow the “steam” of the coffee to waft up from the cup. The campaign was designed for NYC; the tagline encircling the coffee cup reads: “Hey, City That Never Sleeps. Wake Up. Folgers.”

The visual is quite amusing. But then you start digging a bit deeper and wonder how it holds up in the real world. First, I think that the vinyl will quickly become dirty and/or ripped from all the traffic. Yes, I’ve seen stickers work before (grocery store stickers leap to mind) but this is outdoors, and covering an uneven surface.

Second, the smell that often wafts up from sewers is not one of coffee… If the association doesn’t put you off coffee, it might at least make you think twice before you reach for the Folgers!

There has been some discussion about whether or not this ad campaign was real, or at least implemented. Many have suggested that this image is simply a mock-up the marketing agency drew up for Folgers (Saatchi & Saatchi was the agency, apparently). However, it was all true — this was a real campaign.

You got to wonder what they were thinking. A huge company like Folgers, and a respected ad agency. Someone must have realized this was a bad idea.

If this was a city-wide campaign, then yes this would be a very bad idea. But dig deeper still and consider this. The marketing agency placed just one sticker on one manhole cover, and even that lasted just a couple of hours. In that time, passers-by took photos of it, sending it viral on the Internet. The campaign also got coverage in BusinessWeek, the New York Post, AdFreak, and other publications. It reached millions of people — more than it could have reached on that New York street corner alone.

And here we are, two years later and still talking about it. Not only was the ad itself creative, but the execution was just brilliant.

I think that ad did its job, don’t you?

~Graham

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I won’t be around much today — we got about a foot of snow in the past 24 hours, so I’ll be spending several of my next hours digging out.

But as I was thinking about the snow, I was thinking about the billions of different combinations of snowflakes there are out there on my driveway. As many of you know, snowflakes are fractals, which Wikipedia defines as: “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.”

When you look at a snowflake, you see a definite design to it. Except that there is no “designer”. So can this be called creative?

I don’t think so, since I agree with the definition I gave in my first post on creativity. It is the act of turning ideas into reality. But since there is no “thinking” involved, there can be no creativity.

But take that one step further. Nature created humans, just as it (she, He) created snowflakes. So although we can think, and admittedly we are a few steps advanced from a snowflake, we were still spontaneously (and unthinkingly) created by nature.

We developed creativity through nature, or as a result of nature, or because it was instilled by nature.

So is our creativity just a fractal of some other aspect of nature?

That might be heavy for a Monday morning, but it will give me something to think about while I spend the next six hours snowblowing the 1.7 quadrillion individuals out there lying about on my driveway…

~Graham

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Here is the perfect illustration of how science fails us.

Most of us (perhaps all of us) get creative epiphanies when we are in the shower. You know, you’ve been struggling with the phrasing of an article, or trying to decide the best way to attack a problem, and then BAM! there’s the answer. (Or Emeril Lagasse is brushing his teeth in your bathroom, one of the two…)

Yet ask a scientist why this is, and he or she will claim that there is no scientific basis for it. One Harvard psychologist I read about even quipped: “Are you sure we get really do get good ideas in the shower? Or do we just think our ideas are great?”

Okay, as people go, I am more of a prove-it-to-me kind of guy as opposed to take-it-on-faith. But when pretty near 100% of the people claim the same experience, there has to be something to it. In fact, what my own research turned up is that there is no scientific basis for it because nobody has studied it. You might call that “ostrich science”…

However, there are certain clues.

I came across this post by designer Cameron Moll. He explores some of the possible scientific explanations for it, including the “white noise” effect, the minimal mental power needed (allowing your mind to wander), and the lack of distractions. He even references an actual scientific paper written by Professor Lajos Székely about “creative pause”.

All of these make sense to me, but I think there is more.

Carey Goldberg wrote a column for the Boston Globe five years ago called “Shower Power” that illustrated her own problems with getting firm scientific data for the phenomenon. (I couldn’t find the article online, but I did find a PDF of it here.) Her research found theories related to the creative pause theory, that any idle time is a rich soil bed ready for ideas to spring forth.

Again, perhaps. Certainly it makes sense that when you stop concentrating on a problem, your mind will wander on its own untethered, finding new spots in the forest off the beaten path. This can certainly turn up ideas and solutions.

But why the shower in particular?

I came across more scientific research suggesting that physical movement sends signals to the brain, keeping it active. That is why walks are good for “clearing your head” I suppose. And indeed, many people also claim that walks help them be more creative. But the Eureka! moments again are more often found in the shower.

Here’s my theory. It’s perhaps the Unified Shower Theory of Creativity because I think it all has an impact. The white noise, the alone and idle time, the monotonous routine. But also the water pelting your skin, which sends thousands of stimulus impulses to the brain. The warmth of the water, relaxing the mind and body. Even the movement — all that arms up to wash the hair, bending and twisting to clean the body. For some of us desk-jockeys, it is the most exercise we get all day! There are also studies suggesting that simply bending the joints stimulates brain activity, another characteristic of showering.

A shower is a rhythmic, relaxing, almost hypnotic experience. When you think about it that way, it is almost obvious why the shower would be the perfect creative trigger.

It’s also kind of like that scene in Dead Poet’s Society where Ethan Hawke’s character is blindfolded, spun around, and yelled at, reciting whatever comes to mind. The body and even the conscious mind are occupied and bombarded by stimuli, so that you aren’t really pay attention to what you’re thinking about, then cha-ching, like a gumball machine, you knock loose some golden gobstopper of insight.

Of course, I could be wrong. I have no scientific data to back it up. But you know what? I’m a writer, not a scientist. I’ll take whatever works, scientifically proven or otherwise…

~Graham

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I enjoy advertising — good advertising that is. Yes, perhaps being a copywriter helps, but I really love the way a good billboard or magazine ad connects with the reader instantly.

Hey, we’re bombarded with ads 24/7, and most of them are annoying. Perhaps that is why the engaging ads are so much more, well, engaging. A little bit of creativity goes a long way to helping increase both impact and stickiness.

I am going to dedicate some posts to taking a look at creative ads, and dissect them to see why they work. The point is to gain some insights into the creative process, whether it is through advertising or otherwise.

Today’s ad: a FedEx poster from Germany.

Came across this ad last week. As far as I can tell, this isn’t actually a truck wrap (though that would be really cool…) but simply a poster. It was produced by BBDO Germany, and apparently won an award, according to the company profile.

Why It Works

The message is direct and to the point: even its competitors rely on FedEx to get their deliveries there on time. There are some nuances worth pointing out here though that really help make this ad work.

First, the FedEx logo is bigger than the UPS logo. This is very important — if the logos on the sides of the UPS trucks were bigger, I think the ad would lose its impact. It is fairly risky putting your competitors directly in an ad anyway. But if you are going to go for it, you need to ensure that the company appears bigger in every way from the competitor.

The other way they have accomplished this is with the use of white. Not only is the banner with the logo at the bottom in white, but the “inside” of the truck, the outside edges, and the tractor truck itself are all white. The UPS brown is there, but it is completely enveloped in white.

Second, this ad does not rely on any advertising copy (though the ad credits do list a copywriter — strange!), so it works in any language. This is important in a place like Germany. As part of the EU, there will be many visitors and even people living there who do not speak German. In fact, adding a tag line (in any language) might lessen the impact anyway. The ad really does speak for itself.

Why This Inspires Me

As a copywriter, I tend to think in terms of words. When it comes to advertising though, especially billboards and posters, brevity is key. You have to find the true “essence” of the product, and find a creative way to let that come out. FedEx delivers packages — which is obvious in this ad.

But this poster takes it one step further by implying that it is so good that it delivers other companies’ packages too. Now every time you pass a FedEx truck, you’ll wonder if there are UPS trucks inside.

What do you think? Does this ad inspire, or is it just cheesy? Let us know below!

~Graham

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Today I am exactly the same age as John Lennon was when he was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman.

In his last major interview done before he died, he said that he had heard once that life begins at 40, and that he believed that. He was looking forward to his life ahead.

I was 12 at the time, and I didn’t really understand what he meant — after all, here was an ex-Beatle who had travelled the world, written some of the best music of all time, and somehow managed to take off five years of his career to raise his son. What was he waiting to begin?

I sort of understand it now. I think it has something to do with confidence. How many times have we said to ourselves “if I knew then what I know now…” I know I do all the time. At 40, you reach a point in your life where you have many of the answers. Old enough to know what to do, and young enough to still be able to do it.

One thing I definitely understand now was an incident he described in that same interview (it was with Playboy, and they published the complete transcript in book form after his death). I don’t remember the story verbatim, but it goes something like this: John and Yoko were sitting in a restaurant and he heard a song come onto the radio. He happened to mention that he liked that song, at which point Yoko reminded him that he should, since he wrote it. The song was Glass Onion from the White Album — he had totally forgotten all about it.

I found it hard to believe back then that you could forget a thing like that. Although it isn’t nearly the same scale, I’ve actually had similar incidents where I’ll read something and go “hey, I really like that!” and then realize I wrote it years ago. Kind of a great warm feeling, with a bit of messed up rolled into it.

I am somewhat envious of John Lennon. I mean besides the obvious: who wouldn’t want to be a Beatle? Who wouldn’t want to be able to play the guitar and be that creative and that rich and to be able to say “I wrote Strawberry Fields Forever“?

What I’m most envious though is that he had the time to be creative.

For me, creativity takes a lot of time. I can’t just snap in and out — if I’m working on something that demands creativity, I am basically a vegetable for anything else. Don’t give me phone messages, don’t ask me to take out the garbage, don’t give me any information I’m supposed to hold onto. And unless you are happy with vacuous “uh-huhs” after every sentence, don’t even try to hold a conversation with me.

The worst though is when you have to stop because the kids are getting off the bus or you have to get milk or the million other reasons that pop up. You can try to catch that wave again later, but almost every time it is already gone…

John Lennon didn’t need to deal with the real world. Not like we did. He had drivers and shoppers and housekeepers and personal assistants, so he could float through most of the day without worrying too much about “real world” stuff. Oh sure, he had his own pressures more than likely, but hopefully you take my meaning here…

I will say that yes, a great light went out with his death. His last album Double Fantasy hinted at new depths to his creativity that we will never fully know.

But rather than wallow in these thoughts, I prefer to think of it this way. My life is “beginning” now, and I still have creative depths that I haven’t explored. His work inspires me, and yes damn it there should have been more from him to come.

There wasn’t though.

So I’ll be happy listening to Strawberry Fields for the 1,000th time and marvel at his wit and use it to spur my own imagination. And if I accomplish 1% of what he did, I think I’ll still be a very lucky man.

~Graham

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I’ve been struggling with the direction of this blog since the beginning. Well, maybe struggling is too harsh. Pondering, perhaps.

At first, I had it on my now-defunct StrongWhitePapers website, simply because I had just designed the website and work-flow-wise, it just made sense to add it to that site. I thought at first I’d write about white papers, but I didn’t want to be too limited in my scope. After all, I offer many services, not just white paper writing.

Now that I’ve centralized everything including my blog on my main website, the question still hangs out there. Do I write about writing? Do I write about marketing? Do I write about purple widgets? I’ve written about all of them so far. But I think I want to start homing in on a niche topic.

What all of these things have in common — and indeed what many blogs dance around but not delve into — is creativity. This is a topic that really interests me. What is creativity? How do we “unleash” our creativity? Do you have to be “creative-type” to be Creative?

Linda Naiman, an expert in arts-based learning, described creativity as the act of turning ideas into reality. “If you have ideas, but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative,” she says.

That’s an interesting concept. You have to build on an idea — you have to create. Seems kind of obvious, when you think about it. But that is one key way that we are different from (most) of the other animals on this planet. Our ability to see the possibilities and form our reality based on what we can imagine is at the heart of what makes us human.

Of course, this is going down too much of an anthropological path. I want to find out how creativity helps us in everyday life, mostly as it pertains to the workplace. I want to find those nuggets of creativity that make our world a better place, and find out how we all can inject our own creativity.

I hope you all come along for the ride. I think it will be interesting at the very least.

But in the meantime, what does creativity mean to you? Let me know in the comment section below!

~Graham

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