All approaching puberty.

One day we had one of those conversations that sons and dads have.

It was a similar situation to the one The Who sing about in “Pictures Of Lilly”.

So, I went into the office and asked Yvonne, my PA, if she could pop over to the newsagent.

I said I needed copies of Playboy, Men Only, Hustler, and anything else she could find on the top shelf.

Yvonne asked why I couldn’t go and get them myself.

It was a fair question.

The truth is our offices were in Soho.

And I didn’t want to join all the other blokes leafing through porn mags.

So Yvonne, being a good sport, eventually went and got them for me.

I took them home and gave them to my son.

I said, “Put these where Mum, Grandma, or Carol (the cleaning lady) can’t find them.”

And that was that.

I thought.

A month or so later I got a package in the post.

I opened it up and it was all the porn mags.

Plus a letter from my son’s headmaster.

It said, “One of our teachers saw a large crowd of boys in the playground, gathered around your son.

Upon approaching them he discovered your son was showing the boys the pictures in these magazines.

He asked your son where he acquired them and your son told him they were yours.

Magazines like these are not allowed in school, so we thought you might like to have them back.”

To get himself out of trouble, my own son’s grassed me up.

Now what happens on next parent’s day?

Every teacher will think I’ve got a massive stash of porn mags at home.

I avoided the embarrassment of buying the mags, but this is now much worse.

It’s the equivalent of the argument I always have with Gordon.

About whether we should show our ads to anyone else or not.

Gordon is an art director, so he doesn’t trust anyone.

He wouldn’t even show the ads to me if he had the choice.

He just wants to run the ads before anyone can interfere with them.

I feel the other way.

I want to show the ads to everyone before they run.

That way, if there are any problems, we’ll know about them.

And we can fix them.

We can have all the arguments internally.

If there’s a mistake or problem, we’ll find out before the ad runs.

That’s got to be better than finding it’s wrong after the ad’s run, and everyone outside the agency has seen it.

Then it’s too late to do anything about it.

Then it really is embarrassing.

That’s why I think it makes sense to ask everyone else about your ads.

Literally everyone.

From the office cleaner upward.

With one proviso.

Everyone who doesn’t work on the account.

Planners, account men, production, studio, media, secretaries.

Anyone who doesn’t know the brief.

So they don’t know what the ad’s supposed to say.

They can judge it like the man, or woman, in the street.

They judge whether they’d stop and look at it, whether they’d remember it, whether it’s interesting.

The account man, or planner, who wrote the brief can’t judge that.

They’re too involved.

They know what the brief says, so they’re looking for that.

They’re not looking for impact, involvement, memorability.

So they can’t judge the ad from the consumer’s POV.

There’s another great thing about asking people who don’t work on the account what they think of your ads.

You don’t have to listen to them.

Unless you think they’re right.

You haven’t got that option with the people who work on the account.

If they’ve got an opinion they’re going to fight for it.

So I always ask people who don’t know the brief.

Then I can decide what to do.

I want that information, so I’ve got the option.

I’d much rather be embarrassed inside the agency than outside.

The head-of-art was there too.

They were discussing Dave Christensen.

Dave was then a junior art director, and he’d just been fired by the creative director, Gabe Massimi.

Stanley was furious.

He thought Dave was young and talented and it wasn’t fair.

Stanley began telling the head-of-art that he should have taken better care of Dave, looked after him more.

The head of art said something along the lines of, “Don’t fucking tell me what I should have done. It’s your fucking agency. You did fuck-all to stop it you fucking hypocrite.”

In the circs, this wasn’t a smart thing to say.

The circs being:

1)    Cold refreshment had been liberally taken.

2)    Stanley looked like a tubby, bald old duffer, but he’d been a boxing blue at Cambridge.

So Stanley hauled off and gave the head-of-art what we used to call a fourpenny one.

The head-of-art cartwheeled across the floor of the pub.

And, almost without stopping, picked himself up and ran out the door.

Stanley went back to his drink.

Shortly after, the head-of-art left the agency.

Gabe Massimi got fired.

And Dave Christensen was un-fired, and went on to win lots of awards.

That was definitely one way to run an agency.

Although not the one Stanley is more famous for.

However, another believer in this school of management was Kerry Millett.

Kerry was head of creative services at GGT.

She also used to sing in some of the roughest pubs in south east London.

In fact Kerry was from a very tough estate in Bermondsey.

Briefly, you didn’t mess with Kerry.

One evening there was an agency party.

Lots of drinking, loud music, flashing lights, everyone dancing.

One of our art directors was going out with Kerry’s secretary.

He’d had a few drinks and he was having a row with her, on the dance floor.

One thing led to another and, for some reason, he slapped her.

Kerry had been watching this.

She walked onto the dance floor and knocked the art director out.

One punch.

He went down like a sack of spuds.

Two of the other creatives went onto the dance floor and carried him off.

Kerry came back rubbing her knuckles.

She picked up her drink and said, “I don’t like blokes hitting women.”

That’s how Kerry ran the creative services department.

Tony Brignul was a creative director at CDP.

He was also a superb copywriter.

And a published poet.

Tony won more D&AD pencils than any other copywriter.

In short, Tony took copywriting very seriously.

One day an account man came back from the client and handed Tony a piece of paper.

It was Tony’s copy, with some parts scratched out and changed.

Tony said, “What’s this?”

The account man said, “The client had one or two problems, so I’ve rewritten a few bits. I think it’s an improvement.”

And Tony knocked him out.

But Tony was a sensitive man.

And he began to wonder if he’d been too harsh.

The account man had made a mistake, but he was only doing his job.

Tony began to feel bad.

So he went to see the account man, and he apologised.

He said, although the account man was wrong to change the copy, he felt he’d overreacted.

The account man accepted the apology.

Then he said he did however think he’d been right to change the copy.

His version was much better than Tony’s original.

So Tony knocked him out again.

I asked him what was up.

He said, “There’s a boy at school making fun of my name.”

I asked him what the boy said.

He said, “Lee Trott - pee pot.”

I said, “That’s not so bad, what’s the problem?”

He said, “I don’t like it and I don’t know what to do about it?”

I said, “Well you make fun of his name faster and better than him, until he shuts up.”

My son said, “That’s okay for you Dad, but I don’t know how to do it.”

I said, “Pardon?”

He said, “You went to a rough school where people learned stuff like that. But we never learned it at my school.”

I thought, fair point.

He went to a posh, North London private school, full of very nice, middle-class boys.

I said, “What’s this boy’s name?”

My son said, “Gbimini Soyinka.”

I said, “And he’s taking the piss out of your name, right?”

And I sat my son down and showed him the basics of making fun of other boy’s names.

See, the school playground is a great place to learn mnemonics.

A device to implant something in the memory.

What the boy had done with my son’s name was basic assonance.

Repetition of the vowel sound.

Another good device is alliteration.

Repetition of the first letter of a word.

Both of these are great branding devices for us to use.

Registering the brand in the consumer’s mind.

So that you can’t remember an ad without remembering who it was for.

We use those devices all the time.

At BMP we did ‘Do it for half at Halfords”

At Saatchi they did, “Don’t ‘um and arr’ go Red Star”

At GGT we did, “Hello Tosh, gotta Toshiba.”

“Ariston and on and on and on.”

“You can break a brolly but you can’t knacker a Knirps.”

“You’ll be amazed at a Mazda.”

The very lessons you learn in the playground, making fun of other people’s names, is how people’s minds work.

If you want something to stick, get a mnemonic.

So that’s a great tool to have when brand awareness is critical.

When the brief is Brand-Share, not Market-Growth.

Especially when you don’t have a definite point of difference.

Without a mnemonic you could just be growing the market for whoever is brand leader.

Another thing you learn fast in the playground is how to beat someone bigger and better than you.

And you do that by changing the rules.

That’s creativity.

So if a bigger tougher guy makes fun of you, you can’t make fun of him back.

But what you can do is make fun of yourself faster and better than he can.

Suddenly the crowd is laughing with you.

They’re on your side not his.

And he doesn’t know what to do.

He can’t get upset because you’re making fun of yourself.

But he’s being beaten, because you’re funnier.

So he goes away confused.

And you win.

What you learn in those situations is the subject matter is irrelevant.

You win by being creative.

That’s what interests me.

The way you win creatively, not the subject matter.

That’s what I found strange about something I wrote here a while ago.

It was about buying a house and out-thinking an estate agent.

I wanted to discuss the creative aspect of it.

But a lot of people just wanted to discuss the morality of it.

Was it right or wrong?

I don’t see the point of discussing morality.

You either thinks something is moral or it isn’t.

That’s not a creative issue.

That’s a personal opinion.

That’s the ‘What you do’.

Creativity is the ‘How you do it’.

David Abbott decided not to allow his agency to do cigarette advertising.

That was his moral position.

We can’t discuss how creative that moral position was.

Or how creatively he decided not to advertise cigarettes.

We can discuss whether Paul Arden’s Silk Cut advertising is more creative than Alan Waldie’s Benson & Hedges advertising.

But we can’t do that with someone who keeps repeating, “But cigarette advertising is wrong.”

Maybe it is wrong.

But that’s something for a morals blog.

This blog, hopefully, is about creativity.

Stanley Pollitt always used to say that we were like barristers.

The system was set up for our clients to get a fair hearing.

We were simply there to argue their case.

But I admire what David Abbott did, simply because he actually did something.

Most people just sit around and moan about things.

That doesn’t help anyone.

If you feel strongly you should do something about it.

Get creative.

That’s what I learned in the playground.

Every day I come into the office past people smoking on the pavement.

I pop out at lunchtime and people are standing in the rain, smoking.

I go home at night, past groups of people outside pubs.

Freezing and smoking.

How can smoking like that be any fun?

When I used to smoke, you could smoke anywhere.

Upstairs on buses, upstairs in the cinema, in the office, in the pub, in restaurants, in shops.

Every other carriage on the tube was for smoking.

I used to smoke about 60 a day.

That wasn’t considered a heavy smoker.

Stanley Pollitt was heavy smoker, he smoked 100 a day.

I used to light the first one up before I got out of bed in the morning.

And stub the last one out in bed at night.

Just like everyone else.

When I was typing, I usually lit the next cigarette up from the previous one.

It seems excessive now.

But that’s because fewer and fewer people smoke.

When everyone does it, no one notices it.

I started smoking like most schoolboys.

We thought it was macho.

But the truth was it was the opposite.

I was so short of breath I couldn’t even run away, let alone fight.

So I decided to quit.

I looked at it like any advertising problem.

Most advertising fails because no one bothers working what the real problem is before they start.

They just blindly assume that running any advertising will increase sales.

That’s why 90% of advertising fails.

It was also why 90% of attempts to stop smoking didn’t work.

No one bothers working out the real problem before they start.

So I thought, let’s approach it creatively.

Let’s see where I can actually be most effective.

I can’t give up 60 a day just like that.

I’m too addicted.

But maybe I could transfer the addiction to something easier to give up.

I still needed the nicotine hit.

So I figured, let’s switch to other sources of nicotine.

Cigars, a pipe, chewing-tobacco, snuff.

First I’ll reduce my dependence on the actual, physical cigarette.

Then I can cut down my dependence on nicotine itself.

And it worked.

I couldn’t smoke as many cigars (or as much pipe) as I had cigarettes.

After a week, I got fed up smoking a pipe, so I stopped.

After a month I was getting fed up smoking cigars.

And gradually, naturally, my dependence on nicotine cut itself down.

And after a couple of months, I’d stopped smoking totally.

What had seemed like a massive problem got resolved bit by bit.

Just like advertising.

Don’t expect an ad campaign to do the entire sales job on its own.

From factory to consumer.

But by working out what small part advertising can actually effect.

And how that part can influence the whole.

What’s the pressure point?

Years ago I used to study Kung Fu.

One of the things that impressed me was ‘pressure-points’.

You may have an opponent that is bigger and stronger than you.

If you simply go head-to-head with them you’ll lose.

But there is a pressure-point just below the inverted V in the ribcage.

If you can strike here with your knuckle, they will collapse.

You don’t have to oppose their strength, you can remove it.

This is the sort of pressure point advertising should always be looking for.

The knock-on effect.

You don’t have to knock all the dominoes over.

Just find the first one and knock that over.

As Henry Ford said, “No problem is too big if you break it down into small enough pieces.”

The glass had broken on the front of the washing machine at home.

And his wife had told him to get it fixed.

So he stormed into the office and started making phone calls.

Actually ‘phone calls’ is a euphemism.

The phone is not Gordon’s, or any art director’s, natural instrument.

Art directors are visual people and the phone is a verbal medium.

This is frustrating for them.

So actually he started arguing with the phone.

He approached it with, what we might term ‘bad grace’.

He went round after round with the phone.

It was like watching Frazier fight Ali.

At the end of several hours he was exhausted.

And no nearer getting a new glass-front than when he walked in the office.

Eventually I said, “Gord, why don’t you let the creative dept PA do that?”

Gord said, “It’s not agency business, it’s my washing machine.”

I said, “True, but let’s see what’s best use of agency resources.

You’ve just spent two hours getting nowhere.

During that time, we can’t work together.

So that’s four hours of expensive creative time spent not getting a problem solved.

Doesn’t it make more sense for the agency to spend less money getting a PA to do that?”

So we asked the PA, and she made some phone calls.

And in less than fifteen minutes, a new washing machine glass was being delivered to Gordon’s home.

I think having an expert in that area was roughly ten times more effective use of agency money than letting Gordon do it.

Gordon approached the problem knowing it was something he hated doing.

Knowing he’d waste ages on the phone, talking to unhelpful people.

Getting frustrated and getting nowhere.

So that’s exactly what happened.

The PA approached the problem as a simple phone call.

She expected it to get solved easily.

And that’s exactly what happened.

How you approach a problem determines the outcome.

I’ve got a Corby trouser-press at home.

One day I noticed one of the plastic feet was broken.

I thought, right I’ll make a wooden one.

And I’ll stain it black so that it matches the plastic one.

So I went to B&Q and bought some wood, some screws, some woodstain, a cheap brush, and some white spirit.

Cut the wood to length and screwed it in place.

But the bottom of the trouser press was plastic, so it was very wobbly.

I thought, that foot needs reinforcing.

I’d better put a longer piece of wood from the back of the wooden foot to the top of the trouser-press.

So I went back to B&Q and bought some small angle-braces, some nails, and some epoxy resin.

Then I went back into the garage and started putting it all together on the Black & Decker WorkMate.

While I was working I had the radio on.

Someone was talking about what women really want from men.

She said all most women really want is someone to put the shelves up.

I thought, that must be tough on women.

They can’t even put up some shelves up by themselves.

Then I thought, what do they do if they haven’t got a man?

I thought, I bet they phone someone up to do it for them.

Women can get on the phone and fix most things.

Then I thought, how would she solve the problem I’ve got?

She’d look for a phone number first.

So I went upstairs and looked on the side of the trouser-press and there was a label.

And on the label was a phone number.

So I called the number and said, “Do you do spare plastic feet for a Corby trouser-press?”

And the young lady said, “Certainly sir, five pounds a pair.’

So I ordered a pair.

Meanwhile I’d just wasted about twenty quid on wood, screws, nails, braces, glue, and woodstain, that I wouldn’t use.

All because I started on the solution, not the problem.

Dennis Lewis was a creative director at BBH years ago.

I once asked him what made them different as an agency.

Dennis said, “You know how, at most agencies, the brief comes into the creative department and it takes you about a week working on it to get the brief right, before you can start working on it?”

I said I did.

He said, “Well at BBH it isn’t like that. They take a lot longer sorting out the brief, but when it lands on your desk it’s right. You’re ready to start work on it straight away.”

That is a sensible use of resource.

There’s a definition I like a lot:

“Efficiency is doing things right.

Effectiveness is doing the right things.”

Have you ever seen the corpse of someone you love?

Do you notice how the person isn’t there anymore?

I know that’s obvious, right.

They’re dead.

Of course they’re not there.

But what I mean is, everything you recognised as the person is still there.

The arms, the legs, the head, the face, the hair, the clothes.

Absolutely every physical atom of the person you loved is there.

But they’re not there.

And you experience cognitive dissonance.

The physical stuff, all the evidence that they still exist, is there.

All that’s gone is something that didn’t physically exist in the first place.

And yet that was the person you loved.

The stuff that isn’t real is what made them real.

What’s left isn’t them, it’s just a Madam Tussaud’s waxwork.

The life has gone.

See, when we look at something we see the obvious.

The simple, the immediately apparent.

What we don’t see is the other element that brings it all to life.

Because it’s not obvious.

Years ago I was watching a documentary on animation.

It featured Richard Williams, one of the most brilliant animators.

Now as a layman, I didn’t know a lot about animation.

I thought the job was pretty much done once the characters were designed.

But he explained it isn’t just about the static drawing of the character.

It’s about movement.

The animation.

To make the point he filmed 20 seconds of a drunk walking around Soho Square.

Then he took the film and rotoscoped the drunk’s movements.

Then, frame-by-frame, he redrew each one everso slightly differently.

Subtly changing the way the drunk walked.

Then he ran the piece of film he’d redrawn.

The drunk still looked the same.

But, because of the way he moved, the drunk became a giraffe.

Then he became a lion.

Then he became a gazelle.

Richard Williams wanted to show how animation had a dimension that other graphic art didn’t have.

It had life.

Something you just couldn’t see in a still frame.

I had a similar experience with sculpture.

It didn’t seem to me that you could do anything in sculpture you couldn’t do in a painting.

Of course, I knew it was three dimensional instead of two dimensional.

But I didn’t get it.

Then I went to The Musee Picasso in Paris.

I walked around a sculpture of a woman’s head.

And as I moved around it changed totally.

Because I couldn’t see all of it from any one position.

Unlike a painting.

Where you can see absolutely everything from one position.

What I’d seen up to that point had been photographs of sculptures.

And photographs are two-dimensional.

So I didn’t get the third dimension until I walked around the sculpture.

Like the head of a bull that Picasso made from a bicycle seat and handlebars.

I’d seen it in photographs and wondered what the fuss was about.

Stick two things together.

Big deal.

But when you see the actual thing, you walk around it.

And from the side you can see the forward tilt of the horns (handlebars) and the uplifted snout (bicycle-seat).

In the flesh it’s so much more like a bull’s head.

It practically snorts.

So the mundane merely physical object lives on one level.

The excitement lives on another level.

The level of bringing something to life.

And that’s the level where creativity exists.

The spark that exists between other things that transforms them.

The bit that can’t really be quantified or measured.

The bit the purely rational mind struggles with.

Because you can’t add or subtract it on a calculator.

You have to feel it.

And feelings, like creativity, don’t exist in the purely physical world.

As George Lois says, “Creativity is 1 + 1 = 3″

When we were looking for a house, my wife wanted to live in Hampstead.

Eventually, it took us about 3 years to find one.

Every Friday I’d get the local paper, the Ham and High, and go through the property section.

Then every Saturday we’d get in the car and go look at them.

The reason it took 3 years isn’t because we’re really fussy.

It’s because my wife’s Chinese.

And, if you buy a house you have to make sure the Feng Shui is right.

So every time we saw a house we liked we’d have to send all the details back to her Taoist Temple in Singapore.

What’s the number on the door?

What way does it face?

Is it on a hill?

Where’s the nearest running water?

Is the front door below the level of the road?

Is it near a cemetery or Church?

Is it in a cul de sac?

So for 3 years, every house we liked fell at one hurdle or another.

Eventually we found a house we liked that the Chinese Temple also liked.

So I asked the estate agent if he could get the price down.

A few days later he said he couldn’t.

I asked him to please try again.

Again, a few days later, he said he’d tried but he couldn’t.

After 3 years of looking we really wanted this house.

So I looked at the estate agent as an advertising problem.

How could I get him to want what I wanted him to want?

In short, what was in it for him?

An estate agent’s interest is in keeping the price high, because they get a percentage of the sale.

So I thought, let’s reverse it so that his interest is in getting the price down, not keeping it up.

So I took him for a coffee.

I said, “You’ve told me you absolutely, definitely can’t get the price any lower. But what I’ll do is give you 10%, in cash, of anything you can get me off the price.”

His eyes went wide.

A couple of days later he came back and told me he’d managed to get £50,000 off the cost of the house.

So we met up and I gave him £5,000 in an envelope.

Now £5,000 is a lot of money to give someone.

But I looked at it that he’d just saved me £45,000.

I handled the problem just like an advertising brief.

How can I get them to want what I want them to want?

What’s in it for them?

How we can rewrite the rules in our favour?

How can we get upstream of the situation, and turn a problem into an opportunity?

In short, how can we handle this creatively?

Because you can’t out think anyone else by thinking like everyone else.

William Goldman was one of the most successful Hollywood screenwriters.

Amongst other films, he wrote: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, All The President’s Men, A Bridge Too Far, Misery, and Heat.

He’s also written some great books about screenwriting.

The most famous one is Adventures In the Screen Trade.

These aren’t just books full of technical tips about how to write a screenplay.

They’re really interesting books about how human beings function.

This is very useful for us.

Because the one thing that never changes is people.

And that’s our medium.

One of the tips he gives is how to write a sellable screenplay.

He says you don’t get specific in the description.

You don’t write, “Open on the interior of a bar. The door is kicked open, and a six foot tall man stands there. He has windswept blonde hair, and piercing blue eyes that survey the room.”

You don’t write that.

You don’t write that because what happens when you send the script to Dustin Hoffman, or Tom Cruise, or Samuel L. Jackson?

They can see in the first paragraph, that it’s not them.

By being too specific, you’ve painted yourself into a corner.

What you should write is, “Open on the interior of a bar. The door is kicked open and the powerful presence of a man dominates the space. He seems to fill the room as his eyes travel piercingly over everyone present, as if he could see into their minds.”

That’s what you write.

Because it’s not specific.

It allows anyone from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Danny DeVito to see themselves in that part.

Many movie stars know they aren’t six foot tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes.

But every movie star thinks they can dominate a room with their presence.

So you don’t write what’s in your head.

You write what’s in their head.

It’s the same for us.

When we’re selling a script to a roomful of clients, we don’t sell them what’s in our head.

We sell them what’s in their head.

So I wouldn’t write, “Our hero pulls up in the most stylish car in the world. A maroon, Bentley Continental mark 1, with Mulliner coachwork. The body flowing in a straight line from the roof to the rear bumper.”

That may well be my idea of the most stylish car there is.

But you know around the table there will be as many opinions as people.

Someone will say, “Bentleys are very old fashioned. What about a Ferrari?”

Someone else will say, “Or a Lamborghini, they’re sexy in yellow.”

Someone else will say, “Or the new Audi. I fancy one of those.”

Someone else will say, “If he can have any car he wants, what about a HumVee, they’re great.”

And the idea doesn’t get sold because everyone’s upset that whatever car is specified, it’s not their idea of the best car in the world.

So, taking a lesson from Goldman, we write it differently.

“Our hero pulls up in the car anyone would have if they could afford anything. Gleaming coachwork, polished chrome, long curving lines. As it gently purrs to a halt, he leaves the leather interior and closes the door with a deeply satisfying thunk.”

And six different clients see six different cars in the commercial.

An Audi, a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a Bentley, a HumVee, or anything else.

The idea being that it’s easier to sell someone what’s in their mind, than what’s in your mind.

“Nothing IS enough

Materalism is out of control.

Our desire for ‘more’ simply feeds continued discontent.

Our pursuit of ‘things’ that will bring us happiness makes us unhappy.

Our attempts to ‘improve’ our lives is destroying the world in which we live.

We need to change our expectations, and start appreciating life for what it is.

We need to stop thinking that what we have will make us happy…

…and start recognising that we can be happy with what we have.

We need to stop feeling that nothing is enough…

…and start realising that nothing can be enough.

Maybe we just need to stop.”

On the one hand I agree with it.

On the other I don’t.

I don’t agree that attempting to improve our lives has to destroy the world.

But I do agree that just buying stuff is the wrong way to do it.

It’s dull and boring.

Paul Arden once said to me, “I’m not buying anything anymore.

Buying things is just other people’s ideas.

There’s nothing creative or clever in paying other people to do it.

Anyone can buy the same stuff.

It’s just boring.”

True enough.

But it always has been.

Shopping has never been about creativity.

It’s just a way of showing off wealth.

Like WAGs.

About as creative as banking.

Just acquiring someone else’s creative thinking.

The only creative act is counting off the notes.

That’s why, traditionally, art school students ’shopped’ at places other people didn’t.

Oxfam shops, junk yards, army surplus stores, skips, pavements.

It’s not about what you can afford to buy.

It’s about what you can find, what you can see that no one else sees.

Buying stuff is just other people’s ideas.

Really creative people make new combinations from what exists.

Look at Picasso’s most creative pieces.

A gorilla’s head made from two toy cars stuck together.

A bull’s head made from a bike saddle and a handlebar.

An owl made from a rusted trowel.

A stork made from an old bent gas-pipe tap.

A head made from a wooden box, a plate, and some buttons.

A woman with hands made from dinner forks.

A face made from a broken clay urn, with the handle as the nose.

All made from stuff that was lying around, unwanted.

Stuff everyone else just saw as junk.

What was new was the combination.

What he saw that nobody else saw.

Not just what he bought before anyone else bought it.

That’s not creativity.

But that seems to be what passes for creativity in advertising.

Being the first to use the latest computer-graphics technique.

Quickly using the latest digital app before anyone else.

Quickly using the latest internet technique before anyone else.

Being the first to rush in and buy it and show it off.

Despite the fact that it’s going to be out of date as soon as the second and third person does it.

Picasso didn’t rush out and buy the latest bicycle saddle and handlebar before anyone else.

He picked up some rusting old bits of bike that had been lying around for ages.

Unwanted, unnoticed, rubbish.

And he made something amazing from them

Using the latest technique isn’t creativity, it’s just fashion.

It’ll be out of date almost as soon as it runs.

But great ideas never go out of date.

Tell me, if you made VW ‘Snow Plough’ today, wouldn’t it be the best commercial around?

Or the Avis ‘We Try Harder’ campaign, wouldn’t it blow everything else away?

Of Fedex ‘When It Absolutely Positively Has To Be There Overnight’ campaign?

Or the ‘Smash Martians’?

Or B&H ‘Iguana’?

Or Lego ‘Kipper’?

Or any one of several dozen ads and campaigns that everyone remembers and talks about decades later.

Ads that didn’t just rely on using the latest fashion, first.

Because just being the first to use the newest technique isn’t creativity.

It’s just shopping.

A few years ago I read an article in The Evening Standard.

It was about seven masochists and seven sadists.

All men, they would meet up every so often for group sex sessions.

The sadists would perform various brutal acts on the masochists.

One I particularly remember, was the sadists would nail the masochists’ scrotums to planks of wood.

Fair enough.

Not my cup of tea, but they all enjoyed it.

No harm done.

Except they were all arrested and taken to court.

The sadists were charged with GBH (causing grievous bodily harm).

The masochists were charged with ‘accessory before and after the fact’.

Because the masochists were assisting the sadists in breaking the law.

The sadists got prison, and the masochists got probation.

Even though the masochists testified in court that they were willing participants.

They enjoyed it, they even sought it.

So how could it be an assault?

Personally I take the view that anything’s okay as long as you fulfil three criteria.

It’s got to be between Consenting. Adults. In Private.

If you tick those three boxes, whatever you do is no one else’s business.

It didn’t matter.

Under the strict interpretation of the law what the sadists had done was an assault.

Damage to someone else’s physical person.

Whether the other person wanted it, enjoyed it, whatever.

It didn’t matter.

They deliberately broke the law, ‘with malice aforethought’.

There was no room for ‘extenuating circumstances’.

No room for feelings.

No room for judgement.

No room for interpretation.

Just the simple literal application of the rules.

This is actually and deliberately quite thoughtless.

A process without intuitive leaps.

Certainly a process without any creativity.

It doesn’t leave the possibility open to find a better solution.

All you get is the implementation of the same rules as everyone else.

But then that’s the idea of the law.

It’s supposed to be fair to everyone.

Regardless of social-class, age, sexual-preference, religious-persuasion, race, whatever.

That’s why Justice, the statue on top of the Old Bailey, wears a blindfold.

To signify implementing the rules regardless.

But, as we’ve just seen, even for the law it’s not always right.

How can it possibly be a good general business principal?

Especially in our business.

Blindly imposing the rules is the opposite of what we do.

The opposite of creativity.

Where we need to think outside the rules.

To take unfair advantage.

We want something the competition can’t see coming.

Something they won’t expect.

And we won’t get that by following the same rules as them.

We get that by an intuitive leap.

A leap which won’t show up to people who can only read a balance sheet.

A balance sheet only shows you how things are after they’ve happened.

A balance sheet can’t show you something before it’s happened.

You need vision for that.

You need judgement.

You need to feel what’s going to work.

Then after it’s worked, everyone can see it.

Then they can copy it, and enter it on the balance sheet.

But they couldn’t do that beforehand.

Because you can’t see the future before it’s happened.

So you can’t measure it.

You can’t put an exact value on it.

You can only do that afterwards.

As Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards. Unfortunately it must be lived forwards,”

That takes an intuitive leap.

That takes creativity.

As Steve Jobs said, “It’s not the public’s job to know what they’re going to want. It’s my job to know what they’re going to want.”