YOU ARE NOT CREATIVE: Part, the second
Starting where we left off…
That same CEO who’s been espousing the lie that “everyone is creative” now returns from a conference in Barcelona and starts banging the drum of ‘collaboration’. They claim it will help build a culture of working together and get to the great ideas faster.
But it’s a fallacy.
Firstly, the concept is poorly explained and misinterpreted, leading enthusiastic employees to want to ‘brainstorm’ everything*, in the mistaken belief that shoving people in a locked room will deliver astonishingly creative solutions, like squeezing a puppy harder and harder will make it love you.
Secondly, truly valuable collaboration contradicts that perverse assumption that everyone is creative.
In practice, collaboration at its best is the joining of interdependent and distinctive assets to provide differing viewpoints and thoughts toward a unified solution that is better than any solution that could come from a single source.
It requires people from different but inter-related disciplines. Creatives, Strategists, Business Managers, Technologists, Producers, or whatever. Not everyone can represent a single viewpoint, a single skill.
The very notion that everyone is bringing “creativity” to the table either means you have nothing unique to bring, or you have all the same type of people in the room.
Perhaps you have an agency filled with jacks-of-all-trades. Or just have a bunch of very average people, where no one is particularly good at any one thing.
No amount of collaboration will yield a great result if all the collaborators are providing the exact same skill or, worse, no skill at all.
Collaboration in an agency relies on each collaborator providing a unique skill.
But “everyone is creative” undermines a unique skill on which collaboration in an agency relies.
You can’t have both.
Read the full version of this article at Adland Is Just A Land, and find out why those four little words prevent true collaboration. And they're also utter bullshit.
*'Brainstorms' are a waste of time. They don't work. More on this later.
CD | ACD | Copywriter | Content Manager
8yWhen "encouraged" to hold brainstorms, I have on occasion directed my colleagues to arrive with a number of their own original ideas. That way we can postpone the poisoning of the well by the pet "idea" of the most strident executive.
Creative, Brand + Media Strategy, Marketing/Advertising, e-Commerce, DTC, Media Innovation + Transformation. [Amazon | TikTok | Nike | Airbnb | Verizon | L'Oreal | LVMH | WPP | P&G | Publicis]
8yVery nice Matt. And totally agree on Brainstorms being a waste. I have been telling my teams this for years. The loudest voices might not be the most creative or strategic, and they swamp the quieter, often more creative, folks. Plus in brainstorms you get group think, which is vanilla, bland and won't move the needle.