When Winston Churchill retired from politics he took up painting.
He’d already chosen the view.
He’d been thinking about painting for years.
He set up his easel in his garden.
He got just the right size canvas.
He organised all his paints and brushes.
He’d chosen a perfectly comfortable stool.
He made sure everything was absolutely right.
Then he tried to decide where to start on the painting.
He stared at the pristine, white canvas.
Should he start in one area and work his way across?
Or should he sketch in the rough outline first?
Should he try to include the whole landscape?
Or should he pick one particular part to concentrate on?
How to begin exactly?
Two hours later his wife came out with a cup of tea.
He hadn’t painted a thing.
He was still sitting there thinking.
The canvas was still perfectly white.
His wife asked him why he hadn’t painted anything.
He said he couldn’t decide where to start.
So she picked up one of his brushes and painted a huge squiggle in the middle of the canvas.
Churchill went ballistic.
“What are you doing, you’ve ruined a perfectly good canvas.”
She said, “Well now you’ll just have to fix it won’t you.”
And he started to fix the mess.
Scraping off the paint, and painting over it.
And pretty soon he’d painted his first landscape.
See what was stopping Churchill was knowing how to start.
What his wife did was take the start-point away.
She gave him a problem to fix instead.
The man who could lead Britain in a world war didn’t know what to do with a blank canvas.
Give him a problem to fix, a massive mess that no one else could sort out.
Fine.
But how do you start when there is no problem?
Creative people are good at fixing problems.
Good at responding.
Not so good at creating from nothing.
With no brief, no direction, no ideas, nothing to get hold of.
There’s one thing I remember from physics lessons at school.
If you have a piece of metal, and you want to magnetise it, just keep bashing it with a hammer.
Eventually all the molecules will line up with little North and South poles.
So the whole piece of metal will have a single North and South Pole, like a magnet.
Just by banging away at it, everything will arrange itself in the right direction.
Just by shaking things up.
That’s a lot of what creativity is.
Shaking things up.
Creating things, situations, opinions for people to respond to.
Alan Parker, the film director, once gave me a piece of advice.
He said, “When you’re directing a film and you can’t decide which way to go, the worst thing you can do is stop and think about it.
Because, while you’re thinking, nothing’s happening.
And all the crew, and the actors, the studio, the lights, the camera, everything you’ve hired, is just sitting there doing nothing.
While you stop and think.
So the best thing you can do is just pick a direction and go for it.
You’ll find out very fast if it’s the right way to go.
If it is, carry on.
If it isn’t, at least you’ll know what you should be doing.
And you’ll get the answer a lot quicker than thinking about it.”
Isn’t that great advice, whenever we’re stuck on something?
Don’t sit and stare into space thinking about it.
Do something.
Anything.
Get it moving, get unstuck.
As Edward de Bono says, “The purpose of thinking isn’t conclusions, it’s movement.”
Which is why he coined the term ‘lateral thinking’.
To challenge conventional thinking.
To find a way to jolt us out of our rut, to get us unstuck.
And that’s why creative people are often provocative.
To provoke a reaction.
As Tony Benn says, “Democracy isn’t about crushing the opposition. It’s about the vitality of the debate.”
Shaking things up.
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Great advice. Winston Churchill and Edward De Bono? That’d be the talking dog who sells insurance and the lead singer of that rock band from Ireland?
Only of tangential relevance, but I was in a pub on Monday, stepped into the toilet to relieve myself, and stood there at a urinal doing my thing. Rather than read a tacky advert, on the wall was a piece of writing so good that I stood there reading it after I’d finished my piss. It’s the best thing I’ve read in a long time:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/1940-finest-hour/92-blood-toil-tears-and-sweat
I’m not a copywriter. I’m not even in advertising. But if I wanted to be a better copywriter then I’d read Churchill’s speeches. I’d be surprised if the person who wrote this copy hadn’t read them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRbyTxIp10A
Hi Dave, I’m on board.
As the Korean proverb says: “the dog that is backed into the tightest corner fights the hardest” (well it sounds like a proverb…).
The truth of it all is that we all work best when constrained by a tight brief or when we have little option but to act i.e. when the boss forces an action / timing is tight. Everyone aims to alleviate the constraints and strains in the workplace, when sometimes I think these are the things that bring out the best in people / creatives / marketing folk.
More people pushed into corners to act positively might not be such a bad thing?
Dave, that definitely strikes a chord with me. I’d spent a couple of years doing art and film projects before I ‘found’ advertising.
But once I was given my first ad brief, things were suddenly much more exciting. There was a problem to solve, not just an opportunity to do something pretty with a naff psuedo-intellectual meaning (I was a film student, that’s what we specialise in).
What’s more, my work was better. Tighter constraints forced me to deliver a more entertaining message in a much snappier and more intelligent way.
Thanks, Dave, excellent.
One of the reasons I blog so incessantly is that it forces me to write every day. Some days I may not be up to snuff but at least I got my brain writing.
If I’m stuck and can think of nothing to write about, I have my sources of inspiration. If I’m still stuck, I find other sources.
A lot of times I think of Jean Renoir or Preston Sturges, the film-makers. Other times, WC Fields, who always had something to say.
as General Patten said - “A good plan executed today is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite point in the future.”
who also said - “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity”
Hi Guys,
You’ve reminded me of something Peter Wood (the founder of Direct Line and the eSure) once said to me.
He said his motto was “Do it, then fix it as you go.”
Mrs Churchill wears Nike.
Ed used to say “non-creative people don’t know where to start. creative people don’t know where to stop”.
Absolutely Kevin,
A line which could be shortened to ‘JFDI’
Great line Vinny.
But I’d expect nothing less from Ed.
The reason why people often don’t start is the fear of failure.
Once you realise that failure is part of the human condition and makes you stronger, start becomes easier.
Fail quickly and often.
It’s the slow painful failures than hurt the most.
Hi Jim,
You’re right about the paralysis of fear.
That’s where Americans are better.
In my experience, they don’t see failure as a bad thing.
They see it as proving you had the guts to try.
Brilliant Dave. Love this post. I’m sending this out to all of the account team. Good briefs are so critical. If we don’t know the problem as you say, we can’t fix it.
Dear Dave,
I really like your blog.
I first starting reading it at the start of the year after it got a mention in a Sunday Times article about the world’s most influential blogs.
I don’t read it religiously but I do remember some stand-out posts.
Of all the posts I remember, the one about Winston Churchill’s wife, the easel and the black squiggle is the most vivid.
The squiggle was black wasn’t it? I’m sure it was black when you told this same story a few months ago.
It’s a great anecdote and one I’ve found works very well in job interviews.
In fact, it’s such a strong metaphor that it doesn’t need repeating.
After reading the first line I thought of my grandad and his jokes - he has some fantastically funny jokes but he tells the same ones all the time.
Now, when he starts telling a joke I stop listening.
I wasn’t really listening the other day when he announced a punchline and I realised he’d actually just told a joke I hadn’t heard before.
I asked him to tell the joke again.
He told it and it was just as funny as all the other ones.
He was lucky his audience was someone who loved him - a long suffering acquaintence wouldn’t have given him a second chance.
Hi Dave,
Got it.
Very Funny!
(and thanks for the advice)
I was once told to be successful you need two things guts and a sense of humour.
Guts to try and accept failure, sense of humour to laugh at yourself.
I totally agree with you there jim,
Guts is something we all got but its a case whether we can take the plunge and go for what you want. Humor i think can be a good deflection tool though if you fail. But its better to fail then to succeed said the man who created the Dyson vacuum cleaner.
Personally i think it helps if your totally off balance and just go for things with out putting you heart and soul into it at first, it really lessens the damage, but what do i know?
I’m studying creative advertising in my third year, and every monday when we have a crit of our work, and for about 5 minutes before hand I begin to panic, what if no one else gets it? What if it’s not challenging enough? What if someone else has exactly the same outcome? What if? What if? Then about 5 minutes into the crit I remember that those what ifs are exactly the reason why these crits are so important, they are the chance to fly and create even better work, and to fail and to know where you went wrong and create better work, either way, every time you become better, because it’s that little bit of fear that drives you forward
Hi Emma,
Absolutely right.
Also, those kind of meetings are the equivelent of internal reviews, i.e. before the client or the public see the ads.
That’s where it’s okay to get it wrong.
We usually say it’s okay to look stupid when It’s just us.
Where we don’t want to look stupid is up on a poster site.
That ws beyond my expectation. It wasn’t too good neither too bad. I can say it was OK. Could have been a better one still there are always acceptions.