The Creative Leap and Divergent Thinking

Back to the discussion about creativity…

Since the first class we’ve been encouraged to take a “creative leap” in presenting ideas. After another brief task and several in-class practices, I seem to have a growing sense of its meaning.

The base square of the leap, in my viewpoint, is your first impression or intuitive thoughts of something. The leap occurred when you find the inner connections between two seemingly irrelevant things. For example, Newton diverged his thoughts when seeing a falling apple, thus he found the law of gravity.

The leap usually takes the form of inspiration, but in fact, it’s the result of an appropriate connection. A way that helps us to find the connection is divergent thinking. When we break down a brief, don’t rush in with the first idea that pops out. Try to come up with more keywords that are related to the core theme and develop more connections for each keyword. The next step is to rewind the process by examining those on the outside layer of the tree map. Then choose one branch that’s suitable to answer the brief. Bingo! You have a concept.

Divergent thinking help you to shake out the stereotypes and clichés of an object. The more you practice, the more you’ll find how your concept goes beyond literarily showing what the proposition says towards interpreting the message in a more funny, clever and creative way.

The creative leap and divergent thinking

The Advertising Practice

This week the rookie is put into the real practice – to concept for a brief like a real ad man does. I’d say the process is quite painstaking. The challenge lies in the analysis of the “proposition”, or the core message that a client wants to deliver to its target audiences.

Our client is an NGO that raises money to help the typhoon victims in Indonesia renovating their houses. The proposition is “renovate matters”. However, to present the idea with a powerful, striking image is not as easy as speaking of the two words.

Inspired by the Henze Ketchup ad, I was going to “put together” a house with something that people would pay but actually not necessary. The implication is that people can save their money to help those in need. But after the clinic process, I realized that maybe my idea has missed the target – the proposition.

Another lesson learned is: the simple the better. You have to get the message out in seconds, even at the first glance. So keep a little twist but don’t twist too much. Tricky, isn’t it?

What Grounds Creativity?

Last week we talked about the importance of creativity in advertising industry. Frankly speaking, I take this course as a challenge largely because I don’t think I’m a creative person. Those genius works always make me ask: God! Where do these ideas come from?

But what is creativity anyway? Richard D. Chessick categorized creativity into two types – the developmental or original creativity and genius creativity. The former provides pleasant and enjoyable artworks while the latter underlies the personal marks in the creative works – something that is completely “you” even if others won’t accept. Put in another way, the categorization, in some way, distinguishes acquired, exercisable creativity from the born creativity.

It’s an interesting theory because it somehow boosts confidence in people like me, who has excluded themselves from the league of creativity. If we follow Chessick’s lead, we shall admit that people actually have both kinds of creativity in them – a natural desire to express (genius creativity) and the ability to create something new based on our knowledge, experience and what we learned through practices (developmental creativity). The only matter is how to inspire your talent and make the most of your capability. Hope I can experience the how-to in the following weeks.

Reference: Chessick, R. What grounds creativity? 2005. pp.8-11

A new world

In this new semester, I’ve jumped into a new world – advertising. Different from doing journalism, which requires reasoning, logic and the presenting of facts, advertising appeals to emotions and intuitions.

Neurologist Donald Calne’s observation partly explains the reason. He said,

“The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions”.

Companies want their products to be noticed by consumers among a large number of competitors. That’s why they need advertising. Interestingly, those ads that impressed me most stands on the two ends of the creativity scale. There are those with extremely smart ideas, while others rely on the repetition of the dullest lines to create a conditioned response effect, like this one:

If both kinds of ads are impressive, then why bother drain the brains for smart ideas? The answer is obvious. As part of the branding strategy, an ad goes beyond introducing the name of the products. More important is the value, culture and spirit of the brand that