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Blog posts tagged creativity
Travel the world and steal some ideas
June 01, 2010
One of my heroes is Murray Raphel, a brilliant, inspiring speaker and a most excellent marketer.
If you see any of his books, buy them. They're all good, practical, down-to-earth stuff bereft of meaningless jargon.
This is hardly surprising because his family ran (and for all I know still runs) a retail business in New Jersey. That's a bit like direct marketing. You know the next day if something has worked.
Murray once said something I have never forgotten: “Search the world and steal the best".
I do this all the time. And I advocate it for two reasons.
- I can never have enough ideas, but they are hard to come by. So I belong to the W.A. Mozart School of creativity. Mozart said, "I never tried to be the slightest bit original".
- Contrary to what many, maybe most imagine, what works in one country very often works in another.
So wherever I go I look out for ideas I can steal and transfer — particularly America, where customers have the most money and the most highly-paid people trying to take it off them.
I see many examples in all sorts of places. Some have been transferred; some haven't. And I am just amazed at how poorly multi-nationals exploit this potential synergy.
One instructive case was a few years ago when I was running (or at least failing to screw up) the O & M direct Amex account. One of my main objectives was to move good ideas around the world.
We were selling an accident insurance policy with a pack that was doing OK in the UK (sounds like a song title, doesn't it?) and they had another doing as well in the US. Both were typical long-copy sells.
Then I saw some copy in our Singapore agency. A client had the idea of just letting people have the policy for a month at no charge, then they could decide to keep it or stop it.
The mailing looked like crap — and pulled like crazy. (Moral: good ideas matter more than fancy execution).
We tried it in Hong Kong. It worked there. Then in Spain. It worked there too. Then in London — and so on.
It was always hard work getting local markets to accept ideas from elsewhere because of the not-invented-here syndrome, but it made a lot more sense than starting from scratch.
The golden rule to bear in mind was laid down by Confucius: "Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that divide them".
If there is no cultural reason why something won't work, try it. Don't change it except where absolutely necessary.
Drayton Bird is a renowned direct marketing teacher, speaker and author. Find out more about him on his profile.
Drink, drugs and copywriting
August 17, 2009
Guest post by Tom Albrighton
The other day, a client facing a big marketing setback confided to me that he was going to go home, have a glass of wine and try to think it through.
I nodded sympathetically. Many’s the time I’ve combined work with leisure by doing some copywriting over a drink in the evening. A drop of something can often loosen up the flow of words, particularly when something expressive or colourful is required. (However, it can also cloud the judgement, so I always wait until the morning to send the results to the client.)
No-one who enjoyed Under Milk Wood, Sgt. Pepper or 'Kubla Khan' could deny that alcohol and drugs can enhance the creative process. Some of our greatest cultural works had their genesis in altered states. And they reached even those who never touched anything stronger than tea.
Yet I’m not sure how my clients would react if I revealed that their copywriting had been done under the influence. Even those who liked a drink themselves might be disquieted. And if I told a client I was going on a week-long acid binge to get ideas for their slogan, I’m pretty sure they’d be looking for another copywriter. (Not that I ever would, I hasten to add.)
The serious point I’m making is that although we know of many factors that boost creativity, we often deliberately exclude them from the workplace. We might grudgingly allow a few pictures over a desk, or a radio on in the background, but these are intrusions of leisure into the world of work, not deliberate attempts to stimulate our minds. Even something completely wholesome, like spending some time in a natural environment, is only allowed in the rigid structure of the corporate ‘away day’ (if at all).
Those in the creative industries often make more effort to stimulate creativity through the working environment (although one suspects that it’s also partly for show). In my view, all work is creative – not just marketing, but every other business function too. We all have innate creativity that we use in solving the problems of our day. Why don’t we do more to let it flourish in the workplace?
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