The creative process: By @dennis_engel87

By Dennis Engel

The creative process:

"Nobody owns ideas!" is one of the most important lessons we have learned at SCA. So I thought I would like to share some advice that helps me to keep my creativity flowing:

Steve Harrison, advertising legend and one of our mentors mentioned in his talks (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdyt8m_what-a-big-creative-idea-looks-like_webcam) that a well defined brief for one day is much better than a vague brief for four days.

It is massively important to figure out the core of the problem that your brand is trying to tackle. If the strategy is right, the rest will follow by itself.

Without knowing what you want to communicate it will be much harder to reach your target audience.

So here is my advice:

Information

Mess Finding => Define your problem => SMP (the solution to your problem)

Keep asking “Why” at least four times to disrupt the problems.

• Gather information about the brand and its customers
• In what business “bigger picture” is our brand?
• Competitors research: what are the rules/codes of the category?
• What's the journey of your audience, what are the relevant touching points?

• What is…

- The problem faced by the audience.

- The solution provided by the product / service.

Thea Hamren, the Associate Creative Director at Mr. President gave us an amazing inside to write a first, fast brief that helps you to understand what you are trying to achieve:

• GET (audience)
• WHO (insight)
• TO (behaviour change)
• BY (SMP)

Example: Get 100 SCAB readers who think about studying at SCA to read more SCABS to become part of the SCA network by gathering information about our daily school life.

Imagination

Think of as many ideas as you can, keep thinking until you reach a brick wall.

S.U.N (Suspend Judgment / Understand / Nurture)

Brainstorm & Scamps

Creative techniques

1. Write opposite lists
2. Logical conclusion
3. Illogical
4. No words
5. No pics
6. Skewed
7. Truth
8. Celebrate the problem
9. Scale
10. Medium
11. Audience
12. What’s it like!
13. Enemy
14. Random Words

Incubation

Take a break. Keep the problem in the back of your mind. Let your unconscious mind do the work for you.

Illumination

The idea

Implementation

Push the idea while you’re in the flow, question it and get feedback from mentors/students/friends/family to spot it's weaknesses.

How does your idea connects throughout the different channels, what's their sequence?

Frist Judgment

SUCCES: simple, unexpected, credible, concrete, emotional, story

(read Made to Stick) If you have any more suggestions, insights or comments pls let me know twitter: @dennis_engel87