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Seeing things differently. Nik Mahon & Ken Burtenshaw. The key to creativity. The key to creativity, lies in the capacity to see things differently from the next person.
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Seeing things differently Nik Mahon & Ken Burtenshaw
The key to creativity • The key to creativity, lies in the capacity to see things differently from the next person. • Different group members or partners will make different contributions in terms of what they information they have (knowledge) and how they ‘see’ the problem (perception).
Interrogating the problem • After initial briefing, the first stage in any problem-solving process normally involves discussion and sharing of information with regard to what is known (and what needs to be known) with regard to the problem itself. • The ‘pooling’ of knowledge and sharing of information can allow for a more synergistic approach to problem solving. • Individuals can ‘piggy-back’ of the ideas of others by developing those ideas further. • The more we know about the problem, the better equipped we should be to tackle it.
Keep asking questions • Ideas happen when you start asking questions. The tricky bit is knowing what questions to ask. • Any question you could ask can begin with either: What? Where? When? Why? Who? Or How? • Ask as many questions relating to the brief as you can beginning with each of those words – not just the obvious ones that are already answered in the brief.
What? • What are we really selling or offering? • What do our target audience really want? • What problems or needs do our customers have? • What do they think of the brand? • What do we want them to think of the brand? • What do we want the advertising to achieve? • What are our competitors doing and what can we do differently? • What can we do top get people talking about the brand and generate buzz?
Where? • Where can we place the advert? • Where can we show or demonstrate the brand being used? • Where’s the last place that people would expect to see the advert? • Where’s the last place that people would expect to see the product? • Where’s it most likely to perform best? • Where would people expect it to perform badly or fail?
When? • When should we show the advert? • When should we show the brand being used (past, present, future, on certain occassions, at certain events)? • When would you most rely on, or need the brand? • When would you least expect to see the brand?
Why? • Why would someone buy the brand? • Why wouldn’t they buy it? • Why wouldn’t someone buy a different brand? • Why should they listen to what you have to say?
Who? • Who are we really talking to? • Who are our competitors? • Who really loves the brand – and who hates it? • Who could we use or feature in the advertising? • Who would the brand be if it were a person?
How? • How do the target audience feel about this type of product or the brand itself? • How do the competition feel about us? • How can we best demonstrate the benefits? • How can we use the media in an unexpected way? • How can we show the product in a different way?
Different routes Different solutions • The different way in which you understand or perceive the problem will steer you down a different route to a different solution. • The information given in a briefing will start to steer you down a set path. • In the early ideation stages, try to keep an open mind, don’t get blocked by your first ideas (they’re often the most obvious ones), and keep searching for other alternative ideas.
Perception of the problem • Discussing the problem is necessary so that all parties have a common perception of what exactly that problem is… common focus so that they’re not all trying to solve a different problem.
Redefining the proposition • One way to generate fresh solutions, is to see the product benefit (proposition) with a fresh eye. • You can do this by reshaping or redefining the proposition itself. This doesn’t mean changing the essential proposition as it stands in the brief, but looking beyond it and different ways of expressing it. • In some cases this may just involve a slightly different emphasis in a different direction. In other cases it may be a dramatic shift resulting in a different kind of expression of the problem altogether.
Rephrase it! • One way to redefine the proposition is to write the problem out as a sentence. Then re-write that sentence in as many different ways as you can by changing key words or parts of the sentence for alternative words that mean the same thing, or simply rephrasing the sentence in other ways. • As different words can mean the same thing but have different connotations, they can trigger different images and ideas.
Challenge assumptions? • Are we making assumptions about the target audience? – what they think about the brand or why they really want it? • What assumptions are we making about the brand or what it does, or what it could do? • What assumptions are we making about the media, and how we could use it?
What exactly are you selling? • What do we think it is and what else could it be? Is Tussaud’s a museum of waxwork celebrities, or a training venue for the paparazzi? Is Lynx deodorant a spray for making men smell good, or something that helps them get more women? • What else could your brand be to the target audience? • Think about how the answers to these questions can help you shape the brand message whilst staying ‘on-brief’.
What do they really want? • Question what your target audience, end user or buyer really want. This again involves looking beyond the proposition. • In other words, the proposition may simply state something like: ‘The car comes with a convertible soft-top roof’. However that’s not why someone would buy it. they’d buy it to make the most of the sunny weather, or to feel the breeze in their hair as they drive along, or to simply look cool! Focus on the real benefits.
What are the consequences? • Another way to look beyond the proposition, is to look at what could happen as a result of that proposition, or the consequences. • For example, if the proposition for a brand of toothpaste is that it makes your teeth whiter, one consequence is that you’ll smile more. A consequence of smiling more, is that you’ll appear more confident. • Before you know it you’re not selling whiter teeth (like every other brand), you’re selling confidence!
Turn things on their head • One way to quite literally see the brand differently, is to view it from different angles, or perspectives or even upside down, inside out or taken apart or disassembled into lots of different pieces. • Sometimes the properties, qualities or simply the appearance of the product itself can suggest a visual solution.
Don’t just see things differently, Show them differently • When your audience have seen the same type of product in the same kind of way using the same type of advertising to say same the same old thing as all the other similar brands – you have to do something different. • “When the rest of the world zigs… zag” (John Hegarty) • Make the usual, unusual. The ordinary, extraordinary, and the familiar, unfamiliar.
And don’t forget: “If you know what you’re doing, you can’t be doing anything original.”Graham Fink
