Shush, and go do something

Had great time talking about the creative process with James Sherrett on Adhack Live yesterday as only an ad/creative nerd could.

Creative and process really don't go together when you are thinking about "ideas."   But you have to have a process, call it a plan or strategy if you want, in order to make advertising of any sort.  Anything creative actually within the scope of commerce, say innovating products, building a dam or making a new museum needs some sort of a plan to make it happen.  However,  there is no such thing as a perfect process.  It needs to be created bespoke for a particular client/project/team and sometimes along the way at that - in my opinion at least.

But who cares about process.  Honestly, those things sort themselves out. 

Right now there is so much talk about what brands should be doing.  They should be doing branded content, doing social media, building iPhone apps, having two way conversations with consumers, blah, blah, blah.  All within the guise brands, their agencies, and everyone in business is dumb.

Everyone one of those things have been in PowerPoint decks for years, decades even.  They are rather obvious thoughts even the most out of touch executive, agency, brand, etc. is aware of.  The hard part isn't thinking what should be done, the hard part is doing it.

The most important objective of a creative process isn't to find ideas, it is to protect ideas and bring them to market. Actually making them happen.

Though the process itself doesn't get things made.  The people driving the process do, or increasingly make up the process as you go especially as we increasingly do things that haven't been done before.  Who drives the process depends.  May be a planner, an account person or a creative.  Depends on your agency, the brand and the team.  In a way the greatest talent and expression of creativity is actually getting great things done.  Anyone can grab that role.

Serendipitously when these thoughts crossed my mind a bit of verbiage crossed my eyes from Russell Davies at the Stockholm Planing Lab, saying all this much better.  Go read it. 

Now, stop talking about what should be done, and do something.

Comments

[James Sherrett]

Thanks for the kind words and for playing along, Brett. It was great to have your contribution, ideas and bon mots!

Now, off to get more shit done.