Here is a useful tool for you.
If you run a business and you work with, or you have hired, creative people.
This is particularly poignant if you are working with external creative people that you are paying money to.
For creative solutions.
It’s called:
The Crap Creative Reality Check.
Creativity in Life.
Creatives are, really, the best people in the world.
And they will become increasingly valuable.
Because pure creativity is gold.
No amount of Artificial Intelligence, robotics, mechanisation or automation can, nor ever will, duplicate the purest and most magical creativity of the human mind.
So nurture it in your children.
Nurture it in yourself.
Today.
No matter how old you are.
Think back to how you were at aged 3 or 4 (if you can remember).
Or look at how children you know about that age create – now.
It’s incredible.
Pure.
Fearless.
Weird (weird is good, remember).
And powerful.
Creativity in Business.
Creativity in business is so, so important also.
It will make you different.
Because pure creativity does not follow.
It leads.
It takes risks.
It is pioneering.
It stands out.
It is memorable because it is different and it is fun!
It makes us feel good.
And so many business leaders are DULL…
…AS…
…SHIT…
…when it comes to being creative.
So thank goodness for creatives in business!
The Crap Creative Reality Check.
However.
Creatives in business needs to be checked and managed.
So that’s why I have invented (drum roll):
The Crap Creative Reality Check.
This tool will stop you and your business getting carried away with crap creative ideas.
And crap creative people.
Once you open yourself up to creativity, your business can fly!
But if you do it wrong – you’re screwed.
It’ll cost you a lot of time and money.
For nothing.
Beware.
Beware ideas that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside but – commercially – do absolutely fuck all.
They will eat your marketing budget and contribute nothing to your brand.
Leaving you frustrated, annoyed and confused.
This applies to all business communications including adverts, blogs, presentations, creative copy, social posts, brochures and more.
So, here is…
The Crap Creative Reality Check.
5 things to ask yourself BEFORE you invest in developing creative notions through to creative content.
1. What’s the one message I want people to remember?
2. Is the message about our brand, or our category as a whole?
3. Is the work coherent? Does it ‘fit’ with our wider business communications, both tactically and strategically? (Both where it is now and where it’s going).
4. Could the message, and/or the method by which we are communicating it, be simpler?
5. If this media was seen without our logo, would people still know it was us?
Ask yourself these things and you may be OK.
Warning Signs.
The warning signs of a crap creative are as follows.
Imagine in your mind that you are getting married.
And you are working with the most gesticulating, loud, frilly shirted, sweet smelling, bouncy and annoying Wedding Planner on the planet.
He (and it is a ‘he’ in my imagination) calls you and your wife/husband/whatever ‘dahing’ and holds you by the upper arms a lot and stares you in the eye.
Telling you why his ideas are, ‘just perfect’.
And what it is going to cost you.
He’s forgotten that its your wedding and not just his opportunity spend shitloads of YOUR money on an experience he wants, of course.
And – you just know – that if the big day is a shit day, it will be everyone else’s fault but his.
The worlds shittest wedding planner is like the world’s shittest creative in your business.
They don’t care about the 5 things in my ‘Crap Creative Reality Check’.
And they don’t care about you.
So get rid!
