How to get past creative roadblock

In an essay ahead of Cannes Lions, agency chief Wendy Clark wrote that creativity is as fundamental as sleep. Take a look at this extract below:

“To talk about the importance of creativity in the ad business is like talking about the importance of sleep in our lives. Without it, we lack focus and purpose; our work is forgettable and lacks impact; as individuals, and a community, we are anything but our best selves.”

Creativity is the lifeblood of marketing. It breeds innovation and improvement – whether it’s to imagine new concepts and campaigns or to discover new insights from our data. Without it, we would simply end up repeating the same patterns. In short – creativity is what prevents marketing campaigns from becoming boring.

While creative thinking and critical thinking are often considered to be two opposing actions, there are many areas where the two overlap. Let’s take a look at the key definitions of both…

Creative thinking – tends to involve exploring new possibilities, finding unique angles and using innovative or unconventional solutions.

Critical thinking – is more focused on a logical and rational process of evaluating what’s currently happening.

Although each way of thinking appears to differ in definition, both can be used to solve problems and make decisions. And the real magic happens when the two of them are brought together.

All our work begins with creative and critical thinking at Eleven. One great example of this is the work we did with the University of Huddersfield to create a new visual identity for their sports and fitness service. Their long-term membership and participation levels were low, so we led an initial customer insight workshop with students who currently used the service and those that didn’t to understand what the barriers were. Throughout concept development, we continued to seek feedback from the workshop attendees to help guide our creative process.

As a result, we were able to create a new identity called ‘Active Hud’ that spoke our audience’s language. You can check out the case study in full here.

Working alongside your target audience to co-create a campaign concept is one of the most effective forms of idea generation there is. And that’s exactly what we did with Wiltshire Council to support them with recruiting foster carers. We held workshops with foster carers to find out what their drivers and motivations were, with many of them explaining that ‘unrealistic’ portrayals of what it means to be a foster carer were what they found most off-putting.

This valuable audience insight enabled us to create a clear campaign strategy and concept called 'everyday matters'. Our campaign brought to life ‘everyday’ family scenarios that the target audience could relate to, representing both the practical implications and emotional benefits of fostering. The friendly, caring, and ‘imperfectly perfect’ approach to the look and feel of the campaign was central to showing potential foster carers that this was a role that was equally about providing care and support to children, but also about picking up their dirty socks! Ensuring that the audience understood this was crucial to the quality and suitability of the applicants who applied, resulting in a higher conversion into real-life foster carers.

There are hundreds of tools and techniques at your disposal to help you generate new ideas. Some of which you’ll already be quite familiar with – like brainstorming and mind mapping. Here’s a few that may be new to you and how to use them.

• Creative pause: Sometimes it’s important to take a step back and reflect on ideas and challenges with a refreshed perspective. Creative pauses help us to avoid reactive thinking from leading the way and instead to make way for proactive thinking.
• Provocation: This is a lateral thinking technique which allows you to explore new ideas and realities. It allows you to think about things unconventionally and therefore provides a good mechanism for thinking ‘outside the box’. Provocation doesn’t often lead directly to a fully formed idea, but it does provide a very helpful springboard towards a final solution.
• Worst possible idea: Instead of piling on the pressure by trying to come up with good ideas, ask your team to come up with the worst possible ideas they can. This usually enables people to be more relaxed and adventurous, as they won’t feel at all worried about ‘missing the mark’. This method is great for overcoming creative anxiety and any self-confidence issues that may be holding you back.

Getting the input and ideas from across your organisation – even those in non-marketing roles – is the surest way to generate the best results with creative concepts and campaigns. That’s why it’s so important to build a creative culture within your organisation.

There are a few ways to do this. One great way is to create opportunities for casual conversations, where members from other departments can feel free to share any ideas they may have. You could even be proactive and hold focused events which encourage organisation-wide collaboration. These are often great ice-breakers too and can be really fun and enjoyable for people to attend!

And don’t forget to give credit where credit’s due by acknowledging where ideas came from. Your whole organisation will be more motivated to share their ideas if they know they’ll be acknowledged for their input.

At Eleven, we act as an extension of your team to either build on your creative ideas or help generate the big ideas that drive your marketing activity. So if you’re looking for support in getting past those inevitable bouts of creative roadblock, get in touch.