Creativity: the birth of brands?

And just how does a brand and its agency get there, to that Place Of Perfect Name?  Do brand managers know it when they hear it?

The art of creativity

I spent the first 16 years of my career at full-service agencies.  Of course, 15 years ago, “full service” had a different meaning than it does today.  Macs were spanky new and computers in general were still somewhat of a novelty.  Back then, I worked with a highly talented designer on a repositioning and repacking project for a popcorn manufacturer; he still worked with pencils, we still mounted and flapped his paper comps, and they still went out via Fed-Ex Overnight for client review.  We worked in print, broadcast, out-of-home, and in-store.

Concepting  a solution for a brand involved  a project brief, strategy map and focused fieldwork.  There may have been focus groups, media analysis and custom research.  There was certainly a writer, an art director and a creative director involved. If the account person wasn’t a nOOb, they may have been allowed to gain entry to the creative staff floor.

In contrast, during the past 2 years I’ve worked in digital signage and eCommerce fields where technology and the internet play a pivotal role among internal teams and external customers alike.  When the power goes out or the WiFi goes down, business – and even revenue – comes to a screeching halt.

I create, therefore I am

What started in pencils is now in pixels.  Times change. Technological advancements and human curiosity combined with the quest for efficiency, value, and changes in societal behavior make this marketplace different than the one of last year.  Different, even, than the one of tomorrow.

We want to leave our personal mark on the world.  We do that most often by being creative.

We create art.  We create music.  We make food.  We make practical tools and fanciful trappings.  We create things of value, albeit sometimes subjective value.  We may shun the excentricities and self-absorption of others who create experiences we don’t understand or appreciate (think: Lady Gaga or even Disney amusement parks) even while we’re lured by their sirens song of fantasy, escape and joy.  Creativity is really not a prescribed or rational process.

Creative process for brands

Brands emerge (and evolve) through acts of creativity, too.  In this months’ Fast Company, Dan and Chip Heath wrote about the creative process favored by Lexicon, a small company responsible for very familiar product names such as RIM BlackBerry, Intel Pentium, Colgate Wisp, and Procter & Gamble Swiffer.

Agency founder David Placek said “…great names do not come from lightening-bolt moments.”  And indeed, his company eschews the common “brainstorming” method:  nobody sits around a conference table, staring at the product to be named, tossing out random ideas tied directly to the product.  If they had, the BlackBerry would have been named “EasyMail” and the Pentium would’ve been called “ProChip.”

Instead, Lexicon’s creative process involves small, geographically dispersed teams, some of whom are blind to the client and the product.  Those blind teams take specialized direction, often involving the antidotes of the sensations or experiences common to the product category.  In that manner, the blind teams essentially draw out an irrational and possibly emotion-based name idea that could help sell the product.  Some teams focus on what the product delivers or does, while others focus on what it doesn’t do.  This balance, according to the article, may generate some excess ideas that get culled immediately, but it’s a proven and comprehensive approach.

Those “excess ideas?”  Well, those really don’t go to waste.  They become part of an experiment arsenal, ready to be pulled out and reexamined – even reconfigured – when the occasion and product is right.  Danc at the blog Lost Garden, referring to the creative process of software development, wrote the creative process is “a portfolio of experiments” and went on to write:

“…creativity is an iterative process in which you synthesize the final result from a variety of sources and thousands of potential solutions. It is not purely a deductive process with a single right answer…When you fail to experiment broadly, you are building your solution from an anemic set of mental and technical resources. It is the equivalent of trying to design a bridge when the only material you’ve tested is paper.”

Solutions far and wide

Lexicon, so it would seem, experiments broadly. The creative process is varied and involves rotating teams of people from within and external to the client domain.  The informed team approaches the solution fully aware of the landscape and functionality, and they examine the problem from a features or characteristics perspective (delivers email wirelessly; is small enough to fit in pocket).  The uninformed team instead thinks about the positive attributes and outcomes (freedom, untethered).

What does your creative process look like?  Does it include convergent or divergent techniques?  How does your process help you innovate?