Creativity Doesn’t Just Happen

It’s tempting to believe generating marketing creative is a wildly spontaneous process—a bunch of hipsters sitting in bean bags, drinking Mai Tais, and having “ideas”. There is a grain of truth there, and no, it’s not the alcohol: the actual concepts themselves are dreamt up with little to no restraint, encouraging all possible solutions.But the technique itself is quite disciplined and methodical. Ads are equal part art and science.

Where does it begin? A well defined problem. A destination must be decided upon before the journey can be a success. The audience must know x or learn y when they view your marketing communications.

Let’s walk an example, as we steal from our old pal Hemingway, in the “show, don’t tell” technique.

The Tidal Wave Christmas Card

The audience must be reminded “we know creativity” when they open their Yuletide post. There, of course, is the need to extend holiday well wishes, the need to reconnect with friends and colleagues, the need to wish Christ a Happy Birthday—but as creatively as possible. It’s the one baseball we’re throwing, and that’s our bread and butter.

What to do? What to do?

Enter the method.

Let’s list everything Christmas: trees, lights, mangers, wise men, angels, salvation, salvation armies, red kettles, shopping, gifts, turkeys, snow, snowmen, snowflakes, Santa, elves, and shelves.

Let’s sketch them all. Let’s sketch them again. Let’s turn the sketches upside down. Let’s combine the sketches (which typically ends with a snowman riding a reindeer to the birth of Jesus).

But wait. What’s that? The end of a certain kind of snowflake sketch looks surprisingly like our Trademark Boat. Time to dig in.

Research, reading, photos, drawings, rework and rethink. Did you know that every snowflake photo we examined had six arms? Huh. Now that’s interesting. The human eye is so nuanced our card would be perceived as wrong without catching that little detail. Difficult to detect, but it would be there, short-circuiting the illusion.

With no stone left unturned, (and no flake unflipped), the design was finalized and the illustration begun. Special thanks to 3D illustrator Chris Warden for the final rendered art.

Merry Christmas and Happy Advertising in 2014!