Dave Trott’s Blog

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.

I just read this blog-post on this very interesting site and it made me think.

“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.”