The end of Creativity

...or at least the end of my informally formal education. Hopefully I’ll now have the chance to apply it to something. Preferably it would be something that pays, but if that’s not possible, at least something universally annoying and with difficult to remove stains. Like a 6-armed mutant baby with teething pains wielding permanent markers wailing about in a priceless tapestry store.

The beginning of the end came as an exposition of various students’ masterpieces, or lack thereof. And while the students stood by their oeuvres, smiles painted on and eyes wide in anticipation, the illuminati of the creative world wandered about pretending not to notice. Or so the students hoped. In actuality, they were not pretending and were just taking the long way to the outdoor patio in search of free booze. Since none was available when they got there, the next best thing was to just hang out and socialize with each other, with the added benefit of avoiding the students altogether.

What stood out about these creative creatures - these pillars of our society; these up-and-comers who will drastically change the world as we know it; these radicals living on the fringe of it all - was how unique they were. Those that had tattoos, all had the same unique Celtic bands on their arms. Even their footware! Such an array of flip-flops, unique in their similarity has na’er been seen!

Sorry about that. Some fall into the throws of passion…I fall into the throws of sarcasm! But in a world where the point is to be unique and creative, they were all doing it in the same way. And as for creative insights, any views they had were vague, ambiguous blurbs. I assume this was out of fear that what they thought might fall on the wrong side of some manufactured “hip” curve – that true measure of creativity - they were all trying to follow.

Now in dreary industries, such as IT, outsiders may mock the unimaginative collection of khakis and dress shirts on display during festivities. But this is the expected working attire of the industry, not the individuals. It was so disappointing to see these creatives - who work in an industry that is supposed to encourage personal expression at every corner – all striving to look the same.

The second part of the end came in a city abroad. I was lucky among my colleagues to be nominated for an award; the illusive “golden quill”. Those nominated for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd were invited to a shnazzy soiree. Beforehand, we had an opportunity to see who else was nominated in each division. In mine, only 2 were nominated. Was that because the rest of the submissions in the category didn’t cut it and to maintain their credibility they would only award a 1st and 2nd place, or because there were only 2 submissions? Either way, my chances suddenly got better!

They have a saying around our parts that when someone is not too smart "He's so slow, that in a race with one other person, he'll still come in third". And that's what I managed to pull off!
 
 Being creative people giving out creative awards for people doing creative stuff, you can only imagine that they rank the competition in a creative way! It seems they didn't award 1st, 2nd, 3rd in every division; sometimes they had several 2nd and no 1st, and sometimes no prizes at all. Have you ever seen a race where nobody finishes 1st, but the first guy actually finishes 2nd? No? Well obviously you’re not creative enough to run these awards!

There were industry types around the 2nd place winner – the top place in my category - the whole night...and they probably would have been there even if she wasn't drop-dead gorgeous and sitting next to her equally gorgeous sister.
 
As with the first step in the end of Creativity, there was no free booze (A new creative health kick?) so the party dispersed quite quickly. But some people did get pickled and "in vino veritas". So while there was great official hype about the great quality of the submissions, a drunken judge of one of the design categories told me that this year was so utterly shit she was convinced people were submitting crap as a joke to see how far they would get.

How can you not believe someone without tattoos and wearing sensible shoes?

As for the delay submitting this blog…even creativity needs a vacation.

"Applied" is a dirty word

As with any study that is described as “applied”, from hard sciences like physics or phrenology to the softer ones like shamanism, the student is eventually confronted with the harsh lesson of the difference between theory and practice.

Applied studies - as the name implies – usually involves taking all the wisdom and knowledge of the “ancients” and distilling it down to something that someone will pay for. Now the common view of distillation is something which may leave a bad taste in your mouth, but at least gets you plastered. Unfortunately in this interpretation, the bad taste is combined with a horrible sobering sensation.

This is no different in the creative sciences…hmm. Well, except there are no such things, are there? Creative arts, right? Well the analogy still applies seeing as it’s my blog.

OK, so the same applies in the creative arts as well. There are some pretty insightful theories out there on pure creativity: how to harness it; how it can be used for the enrichment of mankind as a whole – like capturing the human condition or getting the caramel in the Caramilk bar.

Then there comes another level where creativity can be used to devise strategies for temporal gains. This is akin to pure math being used in economics; it’s pretty much accepted by most people except the pure mathematicians who see its true vulgarity. In a recent lecture we were given privy to knowledge at that level, which was perfectly fine as we are a fairly vulgar bunch. And we were hoping for an assignment in the same vein. But that’s when things sank to an even lower level; from economics to simple card tricks.

We learned about how businesses could be created and organised around a brand, creating a long-lasting interrelationship between the brand and its followers beyond established demographic groups. Instead of a case study or hypothetical business to develop, we were asked to come up with a cheesy gimmick because the creatives at the company giving the lecture couldn’t be bothered to do it themselves.

On the other hand, it was probably the most realistic example of what to expect when asked to apply our creativity “real” world. Perhaps it was just a very creative and innovative way to knock us off our high horses?

Whatever…true creativity is lost on the masses, anyway!

A brand new age…

Where age doesn’t matter, seems to be the way the “New-world” communication proponents would like to view the world. Out go the traditional demographic markers such as sex, income, education, etc. that make up the target groups of yore to be replaced with “taste groups”. As the name implies, these groups reveal hidden tastes, emotions and common beliefs in groups that transverse traditional demographic barriers.

Although this makes it difficult to contain and measure a particular group - because now it becomes an oozy amorphous mass - most people would still agree that the fact someone is an accountant has less much less influence on how much they like microwave pizza than emotional, psychological and social aspects of their life. This is true even if doing “accounty” things with “accounty” people is a big part of their life.

This is a key point to remember when trying to beat out all the other microwave pizza guys with the message of how absolutely, pepperonily and double cheesily fantastic your pizza is by appealing to the standard ledger in him.

But that doesn’t mean that those demographic aspects should be totally ignored. Age in particular should be considered as it’s not something that people choose and like it or not, the time in which you lived probably has a greater influence on your views and attitudes than whether or not you have a tattoo, for example.

Tattoos have been worn by different sorts of people at different times in history and for different reasons. So does an 80 year-old with a tattoo pattern from an island he visited in the merchant marines have anything in common with an 18-year old who saw got the same tattoo because he heard a famous actor has the same one and it matches the one his girlfriend over her arse?

And speaking of those over-the-arse porn-girl tattoos; seeing as they are primarily designed to be seen by while the wearer is on all-fours and the viewer is behind them, you’d think they would be something more meaningful. Like some basic instructions, for example. Or perhaps a little comic strip to distract while in the act. Or even a simple arrow pointing down with an “Insert Here” for those duller pencils in the box.

That doesn’t mean that an 80 year-old can’t be in the same taste group as a younger person; just that is shouldn’t automatically be assumed because they have some similarities. So let’s say you find a group of people who, oh I don’t know, melt their Gummi bears with a magnifying glass while screaming “Die you gooey spawn of Satan!” before eating them.

Now if the pattern of people looks like A, well fine this could indeed be a single taste group. Perhaps this is some kind of tribal ceremony which spanned generations since time immemorial. But if it’s B, these are not the same group despite how similar the behaviour may be. The actions of one group could be defined by dementia while the other by peer pressure…which group is motivated by what is anyone’s guess.

The New age mixed metaphor to take away from all this is than if the baby ain’t broken, don’t throw it out with the bathwater…

Creativity is like a box of chocolates

Or rather it’s like trying to create a chocolate festival. Ordinarily that would be quite easy; it’s just a matter of adding chocolate. But unless you have a monopoly on chocolate, patent the use of chocolate as a festival centrepiece and copyright the word “chocolate” itself, pretty much anybody, anywhere else can top you. Take any backwater town and follow this recipe:

1. Sift to remove stray dogs


2. Skim off that “smell” permeating from the bar and “Jim”, the local vagrant


3. Garnish accordingly with the Roach Motels


4. Sprinkle liberally with words like “romance”, “eat to your heart’s content”, “nobody less than 150 kg admitted” and “free insulin as required”


5. Add Chocolate


6. Let simmer for 7-10 days and you’re done!

So in order to differentiate your chocolate festival - which is about getting the proles to your neck o’ the woods to spend all their money and develop/exacerbate an unhealthy eating addiction so they come back again – from the other guy’s festival about the exact same thing, you need a clever theme. At the very least, you’ll need a theme clever enough to convince everyone – that is you, the client and the visitors – that it’s not about…well all that other stuff mentioned above. The first thing to do is choose some container words for a theme. Such words should capture the longing for human contact that these lonely people have abjectly displaced with chocolate. Some good ones include love, lust, luxury, lasciviousness…pretty much anything beginning with an “L” and you’re in business.

And now a name is needed. You could go through some demented random stimulation exercises to come up with cool names that say what it’s all about without actually saying what it’s all about, because doing so just wouldn’t be cool. Unfortunately, the people investing in such a festival are not as concerned over design perceptions as they are having people show up and spend money. So, they normally have requirements like having the location in the name as well as the main ingredient. So now that a wonderfully over-themed festival concept has been sorted out, you have to include something clearly pointing out “Paramaribo” and “Chocolate”. Oh the sexy, sensual names just roll of the tongue, don’t they?

• Chocomaribo
• Paramarilate
• Para-choc
• Maribocolate
• The Paramaribo Chocolate Festival
• Susan (Sorry…Tick flashback)
  

And if you do come up with something remotely plausible, perhaps with some inappropriate though somewhat appealing pull-out-of-your-ass word play, you have to remember that even though this is for an international audience, making English is the default language, it also has to make sense at the Surinamers level of English, which may not be as high as they themselves think it is. In their defence though, it is higher than the French, Italian and Spanish levels combined.

So, the burning question:
How many creative people does it take to come up with a clever name for a chocolate festival?

Well as far as I can tell it hasn’t happened yet!

Yin, Yang and the Flowerpot-Man

This has nothing to do with either the Love & Rockets song (which I always liked) or the Bitter Pill blog entry I found by accident while Googling. Well in all fairness, it probably does have more to do with latter.

One of the ways for creative folk to earn enough to eat is by going into the advertising/branding world, or becoming a prostitute...which is essentially the same. If they're really good they can try to start a cult, and like all good cults, they have to make it look legit. One of the best ways to do this, is to disguise it as a revolutionary strategy model; something that will promise creatives and business leaders an understanding of their target audience. Where are they? How can we speak to them? In the end, how can we become one with them...and then take their money. It's a cross between marketing nirvana and a safari.

One of these models - or the only one if you're a true believer - is the Yin, Yang and Flowerpot-Man. Models, of course or not accurate representations of the world around us, but rather a simplification to help us understand key features of interest. For example, the key features of runway models in order of significance are: tall, thin and cost a fortune. Whereas in real women, this is almost always reversed.

With this in mind, we have the extreme existence of the world demographic:

Yang; this is the masculine, competitive, world focused on personal gain, accumulation of wealth, instant gratification. Where logic and reason being the only modes of thought and the term of association is "I"

Yin; this is the feminine, nurturing world focused on well-being and social harmony. Emotional maturity is of importance and there is the association with the "we".

Now anyone whose seen two drunken women in a Toronto bar fighting, scratching, and pulling out clumps of hair over why the other bitch was talking to the guy she clearly found will be hard-pressed to associate "feminine" with "yang". Then again it would be hard to associate those women with the notion of "feminine" in the first place!

And lastly we have the Flowerpot-Man. This name makes no sense, but since there is no other name for it, it's as good as any. This is the playful, harmonious existence driven by intuition; where things are done not just for the sake of doing, but for doing the "right" thing. Basically, it's just artfully vague enough to make everyone think that they're sitting in this space, or at least wish they want to. And if reality is perception...

None of these worlds actually are meant to exist in such a form, but facets of each exist in varying degrees in the world today. And if you know the general area where your target is, it much easier to aim and fire!

Of course, if you belong to a different cult, you will know that the world is divided into hot, cold and room-temperature. Or whales, monkey and beetles. Or apples, oranges, kiwis and Gautamalan Insanity Peppers. Or…

It doesn't really matter, in the end. If there is an end.

Wait...No end? No beginning? Hey...I think I see room for a new cult.

Creativity is a 6-sided omelette

Or a soufflé…I’m being creative here.

What is important is that only one side is made at a time and all the people involved in making the omelette work on that side at the same time. None of this division of labour stuff; you chop the onions and I’ll slaughter the lamb. Oh yeah, creativity can also be a 6-sided biblical sacrifice.

No, everybody does the same thing, one side at a time…and the order doesn’t really matter, because, well, these are metaphorical sides. So here it goes:

1. Everyone focuses their emotions and feelings about omelettes, sacrifices or 6-sided sherpa…which creativity has now become
2. Everybody does some information gathering about whatever it is creativity has become
3. Followed by gushing about the positive values of the…well lets say it’s reverted back to an omelette
4. An examination of the whole omelette-making process by everyone
5. Then everyone passes judgement on the whole thing
6. The key step which I kept for last is when everyone gets all creative on the omelette’s ass! Hmm, just goes to show that not all quotes from Pulp Fiction can or should be modified for other contexts.

To complete Step 6, any or all of the following could be used:

Random Stimulation. How much? Does it matter? And number times a random number is still random. Of course, this is only true if you are governed by Euclidean geometry. For those living in Lobachevskian space, the answer is 18.

Creative Challenge. Unfortunately, this is not a quiz show for people who write in hieroglyphs and speak only every other word. This has more to do with pushing one’s perceived notion of the - are we still at omelette? No, soufflé? Yeah, OK - it’s function and underlying meaning by removing some critical assumption about it.

Provocation. It’s good for making biblical sacrifices (yup, changed again), bad for armed police in 3rd world countries, king cobras and people who speak to canned food on trains.

So with this instant recipe for creativity in hand, why would one bother with creative people altogether? Fire. You need the fire creative people posess!
Fire to cook omelettes.
Fire to make the soufflé rise.
Fire to burn the sacrifice so the odour would be pleasing to God.
Fire to, umm, bring an ancient sherpa frozen in a glacier back to life?

So it can all be done without them but without creative people around, it all remains a bit, well, undercooked.

Everybody wants to have a relatinship these days

It used to be quite different, you know?

At one time, you'd know exactly what you wanted, you'd find the target, make the proposition and wait for a reaction. And when the reaction came, boy would you know! You could measure the impact, it was so clear...after all you pretty much defined the reaction when you made the proposition.

Now, so it seems everything has changed. That target and their reaction isn't so clear anymore. Not only that, it's not even clear what it is you want, or how to tell the target or even know who target is with any certainty. It's like Heisenberg just dropped into your conversation and now the closer you come to directing the message, the less you know who to tell it to.

All of a sudden you haven't a clue of what's going on! And since you don't know who else to ask, you ask the target of your attention.

And of course, they don't want to be dictated to. Oh no, they want to be equals. They want to have a say. They want...a relationship. They want to be part of your world, and if need be even change it; it's not enough to know what you do...they want to know your "vision". They want to share, grow and live along side you. It's no longer "do this cause it's good for you" or "do that, because I know better". Now you have to tell them a story...and then you even have to listen to theirs!

Like it or not, you want to survive in the world today, you gotta give them a relationship or they'll just look the other way.

It seems the old order is gone. Sure you still see a few old stalwarts around who don't believe in all this mumbo-jumbo, but there's less and less of them around, and more importantly less people listening to them. No sirree, there is a new order about things and who knows where this will lead?

So there you have it...you do realise I'm talking about communication in advertising and brand creation, right?