Let’s talk about the Dodge Ram “farmers” spot that ran on the Super Bowl yesterday. Good spot? Yes. Wonderful execution? Yes. Original? No. The lack of originality doesn’t come from using the Paul Harvey speech, that’s no different than using someone else’s song in the track, it comes from the complete conceptual lift from the […]
I’ve often looked at Miles Davis as the grand daddy of creative growth. Not so much because of his creative accomplishment (which were certainly grand), but because of the way he surrounded himself with youth. And the older he got, the younger were his side men. I don’t care if you never heard this master […]
This was written by Tom Monahan and first published in Communication Arts magazine. Although directed to an advertising audience, much can be learned about creative dynamics in organizations by people in any industry. What makes some ad agencies better than others, creatively? (Not too big an issue, right?) Are the agencies that are perennially represented in the […]
Friday, July 27th was not a good day for the advertising business. It was not a good day for Apple either. It was the day the new Apple TV campaign premiered on the Olympics. And the spots were awful. Please take note: I used the words Apple and awful in the same breath. Perhaps other […]
(Note to reader: when I posted this yesterday The Boss’ speech was all over Youtube in it’s entirety. Now we have a bunch of sponsored clips. Thank you, capitalism.) There are few lessons about creativity greater than those taught by a conscious, creative genius. If you’re serious about understanding the creative process, and you missed Bruce […]
I find the above statement both absurd and undeniable at the same time. I mean, how can creative genius actually rub off on an individual? So, any idiot hangs around with da Vinci and he gets brilliant? Yeah, right? And if I spend enough time with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar I’ll get taller, too. But wait a […]
Creativity can be an active process. You look for a new idea, and, BAM! you find a new idea. Or you don’t. Active, yes. Exact, no. Yes, people can force ideas to come. We do it all the time in our brainstorming sessions. And, today, with deadlines shorter than a Kardashian marriage, often you […]
I wrote an article for Communication Arts years ago entitled I’m not creative enough. It has been the most republished piece I’ve ever written. From what I hear it’s also the most photocopied of my writing as well, if I believe all the art professors and advertising instructors who tell me it’s required reading for […]
The New York Times recently produced a wonderful little video, The Umbrella Man, featuring Joshua “Tink” Thompson, author of “Six Seconds in Dallas,” an analysis of the infamous Zapruder film depicting the JFK assassination. Thompson devoted a good deal of his various careers to studying the complexities of reality, this is certainly a bending of reality […]
All brainstorming sessions yield “bad” ideas. And when you go for lots and lots of ideas, as a productive brainstorming session should, you will have lots and lots of “bad” ideas (or “fertilizer” as I like to think of it). But bad ideas and good ideas, seemingly at extreme points on a continuum, are […]
