If you’re looking for a job in advertising in London, you might like to pop along to The Good Agency next Wednesday evening 24th June — they’re having a ‘talent evening’.

I’ve been doing some training for The Good Agency recently — they specialise in work on good causes, in business, government and the charity sector, so it’s an opportunity to work on some really interesting and valuable projects. And as you’d expect, they are very nice people, I always enjoy going in to see them. So at the very least I think you’ll have an enjoyable evening and meet some interesting creative folk. I’ll pop along myself if other commitments permit…

Here are the details:

The Good Agency, a leading good cause marketing agency based in Waterloo are holding talent nights the last Wednesday of every month.

Talent night is your opportunity to find out about the Good Agency, meet the team, and, well, show off a bit. We don’t require a song, theatrical performance or interpretative dance. But we are interested in what you have to offer the only integrated creative agency specialising in good causes. Along the way you’ll get the chance to have a glass of wine and some posh crisps, and meet other people in the industry (they used to call this ‘networking’). Talent night happens on the last Wednesday of every month, here at our Boundary Row offices.

We want to meet talented marketing professionals (creatives, account handlers, planners, PR’s and office support people). But we can’t see everyone and places are limited, so please RSVP to Raquel De Araujo to reserve yours.

Where: The Good Agency Group

When: Wednesday 24th June

Time: 18.30-20:00

RSVP – Raquel.dearaujo@thegoodagency.co.uk

Image © Dave Gray, reproduced by kind permission

If creativity is your livelihood, is it a good idea to pursue multiple interests and develop a range of skills, or should you focus on one or two key talents and become the best around in your specialism?

I’m asking the question because two of my favourite blogs take completely opposite positions on this issue. In the red corner, Steve Hardy devotes his entire blog to the concept of the Creative Generalist, and recently wrote an excellent post about What Specifically Do Generalists Do?. In the blue corner, advertising copywriter Scamp has this to say about creative generalism:

the idea enrages me so much that every time it pops up I feel the need to reach for a hammer, like I’m playing a blogging version of whack-a-mole.

At the risk of getting whacked by Scamp’s hammer (and of mixing metaphors) I’m going to look at both sides of the question and see if I can referee the fight.

The Case for Creative Generalism

Photo by tjscenes

In his blog post What Specifically Do Generalists Do? Steve Hardy argues for the ‘secret talent’ of generalists:

Nothing can substitute for depth of analysis, and there’s proven value in specialization – it’s what education, career paths, scientific research, and technological innovation are built on – but generalism is a secret talent. With so much complex information, fragmented in so many ways and developing faster and faster, it is increasingly important to have generalists around to make sense of it all, of the big picture. People who appreciate diversity, who are in the know about the wider world and who understand how things interact are invaluable observers, matchmakers, and pioneers of the intersectional ideas so vital for success in today’s knowledge economy, conceptual age, and global community.

He then describes the lists the following ‘core areas at which Creative Generalists excel’:

• Wander & Wonder – finding possibility
• Synthesize & Summarize – presenting information
• Link & Leap – generating ideas
• Mix & Match – connecting people
• Experience & Empathize – understanding worldview

It’s a thorough, thoughtful post that repays the full ‘cup of tea and a sit down’ treatment. Steve also makes the case for generalism in a Creative Generalist manifesto for Change This.

Among Steve’s eclectic curiosity interviewees is Russell Davies, whose blog exemplifies many of these characteristics of creative generalism. Russell also writes about creative generalism from time to time. One of the things I like about Russell’s blog is that you never know what you’re going to get next, from cashless telephone boxes to transport depots to the action cook book to electroplankton baths and ukulele mashup genius. He’s a kind of innovation antenna for the rest of us, investigating novel technology and attitudes and extrapolating trends and possibilities.

The poet W.B. Yeats wrote a moving elegy for his friend Major Robert Gregory, in which he praised the younger man as an artist, scholar and man of action:

Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
And all he did done perfectly
As though he had but that one trade alone.

As poetry, I love these lines, but I would say that (if Yeats can be believed) Major Gregory was an untypical generalist. Perfection of each kind is not usually what they are after, or what they deliver. They are more at home with the notebook or sketchpad (or these days the blog) than the marble plinth or three volume novel. Coleridge is a good example – described by his biographer Richard Holmes as ‘the great master of the suggestive fragment’, he has a restless, omnivorous imagination that flits, in the 6 volumes of his Notebooks, from poetry to journalism to philosophy to plans for an ideal society in the wilderness of America to recipes for beer to dreams to sexual fantasies to prayers to nature studies and the colour of urine in a chamber pot. Several of his greatest poems, such as ‘Kubla Khan’ and Christabel, were left unfinished.

Leonardo da Vinci was probably the ultimate creative generalist (or polymath or Renaissance man as they used to be known). As a painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, botanist, writer and musician, he approached perfection in several disciplines – but also left his share of unfinished projects and suggestive fragments, such as the huge statue of a horse (‘Gran Cavallo’) that was never cast in bronze, or the unfinished paintings of St Jerome and the Adoration of the Magi. More recently, some of my favourite generalists include Mervyn Peake (novelist, poet, painter, illustrator, sculptor), Brian Eno (musician, producer, thinker, installation artist) and Thomas Heatherwick (designer, architect, engineer, sculptor).

If I’ve whetted your appetite for generalism, you might enjoy these two blogs I discovered while researching this post: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist and The Martini Shaker. And Tim Ferriss’ Top 5 Reasons to Be a Jack of All Trades. Oh, and Leonardo’s finally got round to starting a blog.

The Case for Specialism

Photo by ceriseyyy

There’s a Japanese proverb that says if you try to chase two rabbits at once, you’ll lose both. Scamp is clearly of the ‘single rabbit’ school of thought and lists his Top 5 reasons why Specialism is better than Generalism. The thrust of his argument is that it’s rare to find someone who is able to perform well at a wide range of skills, just as Johann Cruyff was almost unique among footballers in being able to ‘defend, create goals and score goals’. He acknowledges that ‘great advertising requires different skills’ but says it’s better to assemble a team of diverse specialists than to try to find all of them in the same person.

Marcus Buckingham and Kurt Coffman make a similar point in their book First, Break All the Rules, where they argue that instead of trying to fix our weaknesses we should focus on developing our strongest talents. So for example, I could probably learn to play the guitar competently, but I don’t have my brother’s talent for music, so I’ll never achieve any great distinction at it – or experience the kind of satisfaction he gets from playing in a really good band. I’m better off concentrating on writing, which is something for which I have more talent and inclination. And less chance of being trounced by my little brother.

Scamp laid down the gauntlet to the champions of generalism in advertising:

Here’s my team of specialists – Johnny Hornby (CEO), Paul Feldwick (Head of Planning), Richard Flintham (ECD). Could anyone put up a team of three generalists, that would make a better agency than HFF? I doubt it.

That was 8 months ago and so far no-one has done it, which suggests he has a point.

Scamp receives staunch support from another advertising man, Winston Fletcher, in his book Tantrums and Talent – How to get the best from creative people:

In the creative industries specialisation of labour applies with a vengeance. Most creators, thought they may not realise it, have a narrow range of creative abilities. Feature writers rarely make good fictions writers; designers are quite different from illustrators; fashion photographers can’t shoot portraits; still photographers can’t shoot movies; in advertising few creators of press advertising are really good at television commercials…. one of my partners is an outstanding editor of comedy programmes. At a pinch he can edit anything – but he has an instinct for the timing of hilarious sequences.
(Tantrums and Talent, p.49)

Fletcher does acknowledge the existence of generalists, but like Scamp he sees them as the exception to the rule of creative specialisation:

There are exceptions, but they are so infrequent as to be noteworthy. Some of the most massively talented creative people – Sir Lawrence Olivier and Orson Welles spring to mind – have been able to master a wide range of disparate creative roles. Such multi-faceted talents are few and far between. The creative manager should almost always urge creators to keep to their last, and to excel at the things they do well, rather than allow them to try and be jacks-of-all-trades.
(Tantrums and Talent, p.49)

It’s worth checking out the comments on Scamp’s post, for a lively debate about the issue, including other footballers who can defend, create and score.

Dave Gray’s solution – generalists are best at defining problems, specialists at solving them

Image © Dave Gray, reproduced by kind permission

Dave Gray suggests that we should look at generalists and specialists as playing complementary roles in the creative process. Generalists have the breadth of knowledge to be able to survey the big picture and identify critical problems and goals, but they may not have the specialist knowledge to solve the problem or execute the plan.

It’s an appealing idea that seems to fit the traditional division of labour in advertising agencies between planners (strategic generalists who define the goal) and creatives (specialists who solve the problem with their creative execution). Maybe we can imagine a team including planner Russell Davies and his eclectic enthusiasms, and Scamp bringing his laser-like creative focus to the execution. I’d love to be a fly on the wall.

David Armano finds a ‘lot of truth’ in Dave Gray’s diagram, but suggests that the roles are not always so clearly defined:

Generalists can excel at both defining and solving problems but may require the assistance of specialists as they go deeper into execution. Specialists can excel in defining the problem especially when it falls within their area of expertise. Are we saying the same thing? I think the difference is stressing that both can actually function in the other’s “role” depending on the individual and context.

Coming back to advertising as an example, it’s not hard to detect both sides resisting the straitjacket of their roles, with cheeky planners wondering whether they are the new creatives and awkward creatives challenging the creative briefs that planners work so hard on. Having said that, I think Dave’s diagram does a good job of clarifiying the essential differences between generalists and specialists, and their complementary functions.

So come on then, which is better?

Image by Steve Hardy

As usual with this kind of debate, I can see the merits of both sides. The world would be a poorer place without the Leonardos, Coleridges, Heatherwicks, Davies and Peakes dipping their fingers into as many pies as they can. Equally, I wouldn’t want to stop Scamp haring after his rabbit.

To get myself off the charge of sitting on the fence, I’m tempted to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald: ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.’ But I’ll resist the temptation.

Instead I’ll quote Steve Hardy again, who sees generalists and specialists as ‘two sides of the same coin’:

the best fireworks are generated when the two approaches are somehow blended–in either an individual’s mindset or in an organization’s structure–and arranged to work together in concert.

To me, ‘creative generalist or specialist?’ is a false dichotomy. Apart from the argument that the two roles are complementary, the question assumes that ‘creative’ is an easily identifiable, homogenous quality. It isn’t. It can be applied to all kinds of activities, disciplines and professions, some of which are better suited to generalists, some specialists.

A third way? David Armano’s T-shaped Creativity

Image by David Armano

David Armano’s concept of T-shaped creativity which he described in a post for the Marketing Profs blog, gives us another way of looking at the specialist/generalist division:

The notion is simple – cultivate people on your team that have a core competency, but can easily branch out (like the shape of a T). They ideally possess traits such as curiosity, empathy and aren’t afraid to ask why. And there is a distinction between this type of individual vs. a “jack-of-all trades.” The core competency and branches are complimentary, with the branches being secondary strengths. It represents breadth and depth of skills.

In terms of an individual’s skill-set, the vertical stroke comprises specialist skills and knowledge, while the horizontal stroke represents the generalist skills that enable the person to position their specialism in a way that it is useful and desirable for others. We can see this as a variation of the classic definition of creativity as novelty + value. The novel element derives from the vertical stroke of the T – which David labels ‘creative driven’, comprising insights, ideas and concepts. The horizontal stroke of the T is concerned with value – whether the new ideas and products are useful and/or desirable. At the intersection of the T a useable end product.

For example: my own core specialisms (the vertical stroke of the T) are:

• writing
• facilitating change (as a coach, trainer or therapist)

In order to make these skills relevant, attractive and useful to others, while working as an independent consultant, I’ve developed some knowledge and competence in the following areas, which comprise the horizontal stroke of the T:

• blogging
• marketing
• networking
• sales
• accounting
• presentation skills
• intellectual property law
• organisation theory
• strategy
• project management
• negotiation
• entrepreneurship
• time management

One reason I took time out to study for an MA in Creative & Media Enterprises was to broaden my knowledge of the creative industries sector so that I could position my core skills in a way that would be meaningful to my clients. At a basic level, this means clients feel comfortable when they find I can ‘speak their language’ and have some understanding of the challenges they face. I would definitely say that studying for the MA broadened my mind – at the same time it was something of a relief to return to my own writing afterwards, and to get back to working with clients face-to-face.

I never knowingly pass up an opportunity to compare myself to Shakespeare, so I’ll wheel him on as my next example. It’s hard to think of anyone with a greater specialist talent for writing, or who achieved more with such a talent (the vertical stroke of the T). Yet he was also a competent actor and a highly successful businessman as a partner in the acting company The King’s Men (the horizontal stroke). The various aspects of his career were not in conflict, but created a dynamic creative tension that led to enormous creative and professional success.

The T-shaped model suggests that we are all generalists and specialists to some degree. Some people will have a longer vertical stroke, others a wider cross stroke, with many variations of size and proportion. (No sniggering at the back, please.) The most wide-ranging generalist will usually have one or two favourite specialisms at which s/he excels; and even the most committed specialist will need some grasp of other disciplines if s/he wants to achieve recognition and rewards. Scamp recently blogged about starting to work as a creative director – a role that requires new skills, as a facilitator of others’ creativity, helping them catch their own rabbits.

How about you?

• Do you consider yourself a creative generalist or specialist? Why?
• How has generalising or specialising helped or hindered you?
• Would you assign separate roles to generalists and specialists?

Thanks to everyone who braved the weather and made yesterday’s Enneagram breakfast discussion such good fun. These events depend on interesting, engaging people turning up and joining in with lots of questions and comments – which was exactly what happened.

Topics we covered included the role of individual personalities (client and agency) in the pitching process; using the Enneagram to understand and influence people who are very different to ourselves; locating brands and organisations on the Enneagram; and how the Enneagram helps me choose my shirts.

Special thanks to Rebecca Caroe who suggested we do an event together and did an excellent job of facilitating the discussion. I think it says a lot about Rebecca that she suggested the event the first time we met and was then very proactive in making it happen in record time. It was great fun working with her and I’d definitely recommend the experience.

Hmm, that’s given me a taste for this kind of thing, I’ll let you know if/when we do another one. Drop me an e-mail if that’s of interest.

If you’re involved with pitches and new business for your agency, you may like to come along to a free breakfast event I’m running with Rebecca Caroe in central London at 8am on Thursday 22nd November.

I’ll be talking to Rebecca and taking questions from the audience about the Enneagram system of personality types, and how it can help agencies in a pitch situation, where the personal chemistry between agency and client team can be crucial to success.

If you followed my series on the Enneagram series of personality types for Successful Blog, then you’ll know I’ve been using the Enneagram for around 10 years, helping understand themselves and others better, and achieve their goals in sales, management, training, teamwork, negotiation and their personal and professional development.

Rebecca is a consultant specialising in business development, marketing and sales for PR, advertising, airect mail, and digital agencies. She’s very creative, focused and practical. We’ve had a lot of fun knocking ideas around between us and finding points of common interest. So I’m looking forward to a stimulating and enjoyable conversation on the 22nd – if you’re interested in joining us, please send me an e-mail.

I’m very pleased to share with you this interview I recorded with Tina Brazil, People Director of the digital marketing agency Profero.

In 2006 Profero won a Special Award for Most Innovative Initiative at the Excellence in CPD Awards of the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising. (CPD = Continuous Professional Development.) If you remember my interview with Jill Fear, CPD Manager for the IPA you’ll know that Jill and her colleagues have high standards when it comes to professional development – so Profero have obviously been doing something special to win the award.

When I spoke to Tina, Profero had also just won a coveted Gold Cyber Lions Award at Cannes, for its Mini – Follow the White Rabbit campaign – the only UK agency to win Gold at Cannes this year.

In the interview, Tina spoke about why people development is so important to Profero and how they inspire ‘boundless creativity’ in everyone at the agency – not just the creative department.

Profero’s award-winning CPD initiative included the following elements:

• An ‘inspirational speaker’ series including Lord Puttnam, Greg Dyke, Neil Christie of wieden + kennedy
• A ‘lunchtime speakers’ series on practical industry topics
• Boundless creativity projects set for cross-disciplinary teams
• People skills training from Dawn Sillett
• A training intranet to act as an agency blog and raise awareness of available training options

For more details of the programme, you can download the Profero case study from the IPA website.

Profero

Profero is Europe and Asia’s leading independent full service digital marketing agency. Since it was founded in 1998 it has delivered over 5,000 effective and innovative campaigns for clients, more than any other agency of its kind. Profero specialises in advertising, web development, media buying and relationship marketing solutions. Its client base includes Mini, Astrazeneca, Western Union, Johnson and Johnson, Central Office of Information, Channel 4, Expedia.Over 200 imaginative people work as one team out of London, Hong Kong, Paris, Munich, Milan, Madrid, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney engaging clients with the world of digital communications by demonstrating its creative, connective and brand building capabilities.

Tina Brazil – People Director

Tina Brazil is responsible for ensuring Profero’s award winning people practices retain its talented team and attract untapped talent to the agency. This forms many guises from training and development, benefits, and maintaining Profero’s all-important culture by making sure people have fun along the way.

Tina started her career as a PA in Publishing before realising that she’d like to do her job in a more creative environment. After joining Redcell as a PA Tina moved to Profero as an Office Manager where evidence of the development culture can be seen with her appointment to the operational board as People Director.

Tina’s moto is: ‘It’s not what you do it’s the way that you do it!’

Click the icon below to listen to the interview.

Very enjoyable time at the PSFK London conference the other day. It’s being extensively blogged elsewhere (links below) so I won’t try to cover the whole thing, just edited highlights. If you’re not familiar with the PSFK blog, it describes itself as “a lens of changes in cultural behaviour that influence all of us” – or to mix the metaphor, it’s a constant stream of new trends in media, business, fashion, the environment, entertainment etc etc. For someone like me it’s an interesting read, for professional marketers I gather it’s essential.

So where are all these trends leading us? The first conference session presented us with contrasting visions of the future. First up was Timo Veikkola, whose job is predicting the future for Nokia. I was intrigued to learn that we’re currently in a “Noah’s Ark period” of floods, cataracts and hurricanoes, not to mention Famine, War, Pestilence etc – but that by 2010 or so we’ll see renewed optimism in society, which apparently happens at the dawn of every decade. I was fascinated by Timo’s predictions and explanations of how he extrapolates from “What’s happening now?” to “What’s going to happen next?”. By the end of his presentation I was even starting to feel (dare I say it) quite optimistic. Thenl the bubble was burst (for me) when we were presented with the following quotation, apparently without irony:

“The one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that it will be utterly fantastic.” Arthur C. Clarke.

I was horrified. Surely the one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that we can’t be certain of it? And surely we’ve seen enough of the Brave New World to suggest that it’s not likely to be relentlessly “fantastic”?

As if on cue, Regine Debatty of We Make Money Not Art stepped up to offer a distinctly less Utopian take on the shape of things to come. If you’ve not seen WMMNA yet, you might not want to – it’s fascinating but not for the squeamish, a kind of avant-garde version of PSFK, tracking emerging trends in art and technology. E.g. Today’s top post is part of a series on Future Body Parts, featuring an artist who had a hymen grown in a petri dish and grafted onto his right nostril. Regine described a future in which the poor eke out a living by offering themselves as living platforms for the growth and harvesting stem sells while the rich ostentatiously display their unblemished bodies; where we keep the scalps of deceased love ones like pot plants in our homes and stroke the hair that miraculously keeps growing; and where hunger and vegetarian scruples are neatly disposed of with the mass production of “petri-dish pork”. Regine was charm personified, but by the end of her presentation I was frankly ready for another shot of optimism. Is her future any more likely to be the real one than Arthur C Clarke’s, or is WMMNA more of a postmodern digital freak show? “Well”, as Philip Larkin said, “we shall find out”.

The next session, about the Marketing Gap in Green continued to wrestle with the implications of the future for the present. I’ve been reading John Grant‘s books and blog for ages, but this was the first time I’d seen him presenting – I was impressed with the speed of his thinking, whipping out examples and counterexamples like rabbits from a hat. If you’re wondering whether ‘green marketing’ is an oxymoron you should check out his Greenormal blog, where he’s putting together a book on the subject. The other panellists are also trying to square the circle of marketing/environmentalism – Diana Verde of Clownfish, who offer environmentally responsible brand consultancy, Tamara Giltsoff who is introducing ‘eco-luxury private car service’ to New York via Ozocar, and Karen Fraser, who has developed an Ethical Reputation Index, tracking people’s perceptions of corporate ethics. It would be easy to be cynical about ‘green marketing’ but for me the most interesting thing about this debate was the sense that environmental change and social change are inextricably bound together – given that marketers spend their time looking for ways to influence mass behaviour, there’s an opportunity for them to make a significant contribution. The last word goes to Diana Verde for puncturing the illusion that we can buy our way out of trouble: “carbon offsetting is the morning after pill of environmentalism”.

Having started my career as a psychotherapist, I found Niku Banaie‘s presentation on basic human needs refreshingly familiar after all the macro-level talk of trends and strategies. He presented us with an engagingly naive question:

Where is the love in our connected world?

Niku pointed out that for all the talk of social networking and connectedness, the word ‘love’ is conspicuous by its absence from the Web 2.0 vocabulary. Yet the need for love isn’t going away soon, and we should be careful that we don’t substitute online ‘friends’ for real friendship. Other basic needs he highlighted were the need to learn, to give back, to play and the need for simplicity in a complex world. Niku is a managing partner at Naked, which has a formidable reputation for cutting-edge media-savvy brainpower, so the simplicity of his message was slightly unexpected and all the more welcome for that.

Of all the session chairpeople (-persons?) Steven Overman had the biggest challenge in chairing the lively exchanges between Simon Sinek, Beeker and Faris Yakob, which he accomplished with admirable tact and humour. Beeker and Faris were as interesting on stage as they are in their blogs, which I’ve been reading for a while, but this was the first time I’d come across Simon. He burst into the debate like a bull in a china shop, telling us that following trends was a dangerous activity (“terrible thing to say at a trends conference – sorry”) and hammering home his message that inspiring people with a sense of purpose is the most important thing a company can do:

“There are only two ways to influence behaviour, you can manipulate it or inspire it.”

I like that – brilliantly simple and applicable to all kinds of communication, from personal relationships to marketing, therapy, management, sales, coaching, politics, etc. Looks like there’s plenty more where that came from on Simon’s blog.

After that, we were all ready for lunch.

Thanks to Will Humphrey for the photos.

More about the conference from Will, Helen and the Punk and Northern Planners.

Technorati Tags: psfk, psfklondon

Hot on the heels of the Is Blogging Killing Planning? debate, Paul Feldwick has bravely stepped into the ring by suggesting that poetry and planning have things in common, and that poets and advertising folk have things to learn from each other. He recently gave a talk on Poetry and Planning at the Account Planning Group, the gist of which is available to download from the APG site, as well as his ‘Fine Frenzy Manifesto’ about “poetry as a force for change in organisations”.

Here’s the basic (ahem) proposition:

Poetry and advertising are usually thought of as remote from each other, with a good deal of distrust or ridicule often expressed on both sides – even in an agency world that prides itself on its ‘creativity’.

Despite – or perhaps even because of – this, I find there is a lot of latent power to be released by bringing these two worlds together.

Having seen eyes roll, both in poetry classes when I’ve talked about working in ad agencies, and in business seminars when I’ve mentioned poetry, I can testify to the “distrust and ridicule”. So I’m very interested in what Paul’s doing. Creativity often happens at the point where two worlds meet – sometimes it’s a conversation, others it’s more like a flashpoint. It’s amazing how conservative so-called ‘creative’ disciplines can be when invited to consider an alternative worldview, so I’m intrigued to see what happens when Paul introduces poetry and advertising to each other.

Here’s a paragraph from the ‘Poetry and Planning’ pdf that caught my eye:

my experience of poetry has led me to reconsider some of the popular ideas we have about ‘creativity’. In advertising, and in business generally, the idea of creativity is often associated with innovation or originality for its own sake. Poems do generally I think strive to seem fresh and express things in new ways. But innovation for its own sake is really the least important thing that makes a great poem. Surely it’s all rather to do with getting every detail right, getting the structure and rhythm and balance right, the nuances and for want of a better word, the ‘artistry’? I’m sure that this is just as true of ads as it is of poems. Yet we routinely devalue all this as a mere ‘craft skill’, and celebrate instead the originality of the ‘creative idea’. I don’t think, however that great ads are just ideas dressed up to go out, any more than poems (or plays, or pictures) are. This thinking is based on a desire to reduce something complex and organic to a simple essence that can be analysed, owned and controlled. I don’t believe that’s possible and it has damaging consequences.

I love this as I get tired of hearing creativity equated simply with idea generation, when that’s often the easiest and least interesting part of the creative process. Shakespeare wasn’t interested in creating ‘original’ plots, but his execution was pretty good – he was so intent on “getting every detail right, getting the structure and rhythm and balance right” that the originality took care of itself. In my own humble way, I know that when I’ve made a conscious effort to write an original or new kind of poem, the strain shows in the writing – the most interesting things happen when I’m focused on something else, on trying to capture something accurately or tease out the little animating goblin in a word or phrase.

I was disappointed to miss Paul’s APG talk so I’m grateful to Russell Davies and Mark Rapley for inviting me along to an evening last week where Paul entertained a group of (mostly) planners with readings from poets including Rilke, John Hartley Williams and Billy Collins. As well as having good taste, Paul is a terrific reader and has lots of interesting things to say. Have a read of his talk and manifesto pdfs (on the APG site) – they’ll bring a bit of inspiration to your day and maybe even your business.

Interesting piece in Campaign (2nd March) about ‘Adland’s Artists’ – advertising luminaries who create art in their spare time, with pics of their creations and quotes about why they do it.

Some of them, like Graham Fink (Executive Creative Director, M&C Saatchi), see a link between their advertising work and their art:

“Art is massively important. It’s important to stamp a part of your spirit on your work projects.”

While Trevor Beattie (Partner, Beattie McGuinness Bungay) sees the two as worlds apart:

“Art has nothing to do with my work; art is in a box marked ‘art’. Advertising is strictly commerce.”

Here’s the article – you need to sign in but apparently registration is now free. (The Brandrepublic site has just gone all Web 2.0 with a new design and blogs – maybe Russell’s having an influence.)

Personally, I like having my poetry occupy a slightly separate space from my coaching work (it even insisted on having its own blog) and I don’t mention it much during coaching sessions, but I’m sure the two influence each other.

How about you? Do you keep your ‘professional creativity’ and your ‘art’ separate or do you like to mix them up?

OK I might have made a mistake by promising to do Creative Links on a monthly basis – there are simply too many good creativity posts. Or maybe it’s like buying a new car – as soon as you decide on the model you want, you see it everywhere. In the interests of keeping up and keeping things fresh I’ll have a go at doing Creative Links weekly from now on. But first here’s the edited highlights of what I found in January, sorted into categories to keep it manageable.

Where do ideas come from?
Scamp takes issue with a piece of research that claims Where Ideas Come From is other people. Beeker claims it’s ethical to Steal Well, and Faris, true to his motto that Talent Imitates, Genius Steals, Couldn’t Resist the joys of plagiarism. Neither could I – here’s the picture he doubtless nicked from someone else:

If you’re looking for a balanced view, Doc Searls weighs up the pros and cons of disclosing your ideas vs keeping them secret in his post 10 Ideas About Ideas (via Creative Generalist); while Brian Lee advocates a middle way between plagiarism and the pressure to be original, reminding us that Creativity Is A Communal Act.

Tortured Artists
It may just be wishful thinking but I don’t see why artists shouldn’t enjoy themselves (and their work) as much as anyone else. I’m glad to learn that at least Douglas Eby agrees with me, in this great post on Pain and Suffering and the Artist.

Creative Partners
The subject of torture brings us neatly to relationships. Scamp continued his excellent series of Tips for Creatives with Finding the Right Partner and How to Have a Good Relationship with Your Partner – useful advice interlarded with (for me) flashbacks to my days as a couples therapist.

Synaesthesia
As a fan of creative synaesthesia and inter-disciplinary creativity I was pleased to see Mark Hancock catch the synaesthesia bug when he ventured out of the advertising world and spent time with videogame creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Noisy Decent Graphics did a brilliant piece on What I see when I listen and Russell played around with Electroplankton, which looks a bit like an online, affordable version of the Reactable.

Creative Flow
Speaking of altered states of consciousness, Steve Pavlina wrote a great description of My Experience of Creativity, prompting my inner Creativity Trainspotter to tick off Csikszentmihalyi’s Nine Elements of Creative Flow – can you spot them all? Steve followed up that post with 7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creativity.

Planning
Adliterate hosted a cracking debate on the question Is Blogging Killing Planning? I’m not a planner so I’m not qualified to answer the question, but reading through the comments on that post and judging from the general quality of blogs in the plannersphere, I have to say planning is doing wonders for blogging.

Creative Collaboration
Staying with planning for a moment, John Grant argues the case for Planning as Mediation – between the (potentially conflicting) interests of the client, creatives and customer. Simon Darwell-Taylor bemoans the lack of inter-disciplinary communication in ‘the typical ad agency’, as opposed to the more collaborative approach of TV production. Yet the grass is always greener – Richard Wilson has started a wonderfully dour blog called TV Grouting, where he says:

TV and the internet don’t seem to me to be natural partners. The internet is based on the principle of sharing information and ideas and making everything cheaper. TV is about owning and jealously guarding ideas and extracting as much money as possible from them

He contrasts this sad state of affairs with the world of advertising, where planners like Russell are ‘willing to share their ideas ‘with any number of people who might be prepared to nick them’. (As if they would…)

So what can we conclude about creative collaboration?

• Creative people need to share to be creative
• Creative people get scared of sharing because someone might steal their creativity
• Creative people sometimes need someone around to get them to share a bit more
• Creative sharing looks terrific fun from a distance, it’s a bit messier close up.

For the pitfalls of creative collaboration, see Kathy Sierra’s brilliant The Dumbness of Crowds.

Creative Think
It’s almost impossible to single out individual pieces by Roger von Oech, they are all so consistently and variously creative, you might as well pick some at random – which is exactly what you can do if you click his picture on the Creative Think homepage. A couple of blog posts that stood out for me in January were Set A Deadline to Goad Your Creative Juices, countering the received wisdom that creativity is all about freedom from constraints; and his invocation of the God Janus to usher in the New Year by thinking something different.

Enterprising Blogging
Hugh McLeod knows a fair bit about blogging and being an entrepreneur, his random thoughts on the subjects are more memorable than most people’s considered musings.

Making a Living as an Artist
The online opportunities for creative producers can be bewildering – Jonathan Bailey clarifies the strategic options available in an excellent post on The New Content Economy.

Writing
Delve into the voluminous archives of Liz Strauss’ blogs and you’ll see she’s no stranger to Unblanking the blank screen so it’s worth listening to what she’s got to say about it. She’s got loads more great posts on writing, but 10 Ways to Start a Blog Post should keep you going for a while.

For What Not to Write, look at Claudinho’s post about 20 Words Most Used in Press Conferences. ‘Best of breed’ anyone?

And just when you’re relieved that the words are finally starting to flow, up pops killjoy Brian Clark to tell you Why Creativity Can Kill Your Copy. Brian’s a master of the headline that draws you in – admit it, you’re itching to know what’s so bad about creativity, aren’t you?

I’m going to make Creative Links a monthly feature, highlighting posts about creativity and related matters that are inspiring, interesting, useful or preferably all three.

Here’s what I found in December:

Procrastination is a classic way to block creativity, so if that’s your Achilles heel, read Kathy Sierra’s Creativity on Speed, on the excellent Creating Passionate Users.

One of the best ways to be truly creative–breakthrough creative–is to be forced to go fast. Really, really, really fast. From the brain’s perspective, it makes sense that extreme speed can unlock creativity. When forced to come up with something under extreme time constraints, we’re forced to rely on the more intuitive, subconscious parts of our brain. The time pressure can help suppress the logical/rational/critical parts of your brain.

Kathy Sierra’s trailer is one of the creative workspaces featured in Alexander Kjerulf’s gorgeously-illustrated list of 10 Seeeeeriously Cool Workplaces. Other featured offices include Pixar, Mindlab in Copenhagen, Volkswagen in Dresden, and of course the Googleplex.

It was great to get a Christmas present from Design Observer when they linked to my enthusiasm post in their ‘Observed’ column. I can’t imagine them getting quite so excited about a link back from me, but Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School is worth reading (even if you didn’t miss out on the top 10 by not going to design school). The list includes ‘Talent is one-third of the success equation’, ’95 percent of any creative profession is shit work’ and ‘When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance’.

Staying with the business of design, Graphic Define has a good list of questions for aspiring designer/entrepreneurs – ‘Are You Ready to Open Your Own Design Studio?’.

Thanks to Three Minds @ Organic for pointing me to the New York Times’ Year In Ideas Issue, covering the ‘serious and silly’ ideas of 2006, such as ‘The Comb that Listens’, ‘Empty-Stomach Intelligence’ and ‘Wine that Ages Instantly’. Three Minds also introduced me to the delightful Samorost Interactive Adventure (Not Safe for Anyone with Lots to Do).

Scamp is writing a great series of Tips for Young Creatives. No.4 was Pretend You’re Two Blokes in the Pub and try to convince your mate of the value of the product you’re working on:

It strips away all the marketing bullshit, and can lead to something simple and honest.

I’ve been using a similar technique for ages, to get writers (including myself) unblocked and strip away the ‘literary bullshit’, so it’s good to see it applied to advertising. Other tips in the series – 1. Don’t Over-Polish, 2. Choosing an Agency, 3. Play Family Fortunes, 5. Dickett’s Finger, 6. Use Never-Seen-Before-Footage and 7. How to Approach Agencies. Hopefully there will be plenty more in 2007.

Apart from being essential reading for anyone with a presentation to give, Presentation Zen provide plenty of general creative inspiration offers inspiration like this end-of-year post on The Need for Solitude in the creative process.

Finally, Brian Clark’s Copyblogger is one of the most consistently useful blogs on the web – if you write a business blog, website or e-book you’re probably reading him already, but if not you can’t afford to miss The Best of Copyblogger.

That’s it for December – I’ll post January’s creative links early in February.

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