Creative Streak

Quality vs. Conciseness

From Fast Company, here's an article about Shortmail.com, an e-mail system which limits messages to 500 characters. 

Says a company spokesperson: "[The] length limit on messages is long enough to express most coherent points or ask a colleague a question, while filtering out much spam, newsletters, promotions, and dissertations. Thus [Shortmail] becomes the place for the to-the-point messages in sizes and quantity you can digest and respond to quickly."

I'm not sure if I'm irked at the concept, or hoping they find a better PR person to re-position their product. I'm all for people being more succinct when they talk, but wouldn't it be better to suggest the service forces people to think more intelligently about what they're trying to communicate, not just say it in less words?

In other words, shouldn't quality first, conciseness second be more valued/valuable than simply using less words?

Can I Have That Idea For Less?

This is a group of responses based on one of the most popular posts I've written in the three years since Creative Streak began. How To Make A Creative Director Cry outlines the ten most common responses I've heard as a creative director, with links to each subsequent post giving more thoughts and suggestions to address each statement. This is statement #10: "Great idea. Can I have it for half the cost?"

Experience has taught me to respond to this question in two ways.

1. Is the client asking the question because they simply want to negotiate?

2. Is the client asking the question because we didn’t explain the idea properly?

Negotiating or Haggling

It’s almost human nature to want something of value for less. If it ever went out of style, a recent article in the Washington Post suggests there’s a resurgence in haggling because of the recent recession.

For some people, negotiating is a game (me included, especially if it's an antique). It’s actually invigorating to bargain, especially when you get a concession, however small. For other people, a price or an estimate is nothing more than a suggestion, a perceived indication of an item’s value. Negotiating is a way to find the balance between want and need. For others, negotiating is a fundamental part of their philosophy or values. My first assignment at my first job was to get estimates from vendors. Before I began, the managing director sat me down and gave me her two cardinal rules: 1. Negotiating is good business. Therefore, never accept the first quote. 2. Because it’s business, don’t make it personal.

Want To Get Heard? Say Less

An excellent post by Dawn Lennon from Business Fitness. In particular, her four techniques to say the right thing at the right moment makes it well worth the read.

1. State or re-state the problem.
2. Synthesize ideas.
3. Summarise key points.
4. Simply.

How To Make A Creative Director Cry

I can trace most of my career path back to one person: Darrin Stephens, the harried husband from the American TV sitcom Bewitched. Take away the attractive Elizabeth Montgomery as the witch who gives up her magical powers to marry a mere mortal, and the shenanigans doled out by the meddling mother-in-law Endora, even the glistening 1960s production values ... and you're left with a man who had the world's greatest job. He was a Creative Director.

The Value of Criticism

  Going through lots of old stuff again today. Here’s a brilliant quote, from Creative Management by William Marsteller, who with Harold Burson started their eponymous agency. Not so easy to find today, perhaps because people don't keep books like this around anymore. It's from the antique age of communications - in 1981. Anyway, it's still a great book, written in a style that I'd like to try someday. It's what I generally call "intelligensitrivia" - an insight collection of stuff, stories, thoughts, truths, testimonials, narrative, quotes, tra la la.

"All of us by nature easily fall in love with our own ideas, our own words. Excellence is born of intelligent criticism. And maturity is the product of the self-confidence that seeks, accepts and benefits from criticism. To avoid it is a symptom of personal weakness or low ability or both."

Brainstorming in a Digital World, Part 2

Part #1 is here.

When I began leading brainstorms as a full-time activity, one of the first strange experiences was running an ideation session with a group of people who weren't even in the same room. Or continent. It was me on a bad squawk box in Chicago. Two people arguing in New York. A woman in Miami with a radio playing in the background, and a half-asleep person listening in Beijing.

Despite its revolutionary brillaance, the Digital World still needs the human brain to come up with ideas. The key is finding ways to use its tools to bring disparate people - by space, by geography, by ideology - together mentally to facilitate their creative skills. The good news is that the tools improve every day, and will only get better.

I have my own preferences: love some, hate others. If we compared our lists, I'm sure we'd clash. Here's where we should agree: the ground-rules of remote brainstorming, whichever tools you choose to use.

Personal Innovation Lifestyle

Sometimes modern technology gives us phrases which at the same time ring true but sound hilariously pretentious. Exhibit A: Personal Innovation Lifestyle.

It’s easy to give PIL a glossy iStylized definition, but here's one in plain English: a desire to learn new things, about yourself and/or the world around you. (Haha, do you know how hard it was to write a definition and not use the words “evolve”, "personal brand", “transcend”, and “higher power”? Add those words in somehow and you'll get a more exact meaning of PIL)

Before the digital world revolutionized everything, learning something new (like a language) or something more in depth (like gardening) was “a hobby” – which in itself was something you did when you weren’t at work, taking care of the kids, and had some time and a bit of leftover cash.  Now, thanks to Mark Zuckerburg’s desire to learn Chinese, or Gwyneth Paltrow’s display of jumping from acting to singing to cookbook writing, we now have PIL.

Brainstorming in a Digital World, Part 1

Has the Internet made us better at creative thinking?  There’s been a huge swath of articles over the past several years debating whether the Internet has made us more stupid or smart. Here's a short list of its strengths and weaknesses.

The Digitalista would say the Internet gives us more creative fuel by allowing ...

• Instant communications with more types/diversity of people from a larger network
• Instant information (facts, research, intelligence)research, ideas, concepts, intelligence)
• Instant inspiration and exposure (ideas, concepts, trends, options) – IOW, flowing in of stimulation
• Instant self-expression – IOW, flowing out of stimulation
• Less to remember, so our minds can do more important tasks – like make ideas
• Remote working, allowing us to create in environments more conducive to our personality and style

In other words, the Internet harnesses our creative thinking through a larger collective consciousness.  As my friend Teresa said, “It makes me feel creative.”