Category: creativity

All aboard! Let’s try this two minute activity.

So doing a sort of stream-of-consciousness thinking session, forcing myself to just sit, not write or wander or fidget, actually works wonders. It dug up an old idea I never used and had basically forgotten about. Okay, so we’ve probably all seen at least a few of the advertisements mocking the new iPhone 6 bending, and some of them are pretty great. The incident even prompted a trending hashtag on Twitter, “#bendgate.”

 

 

Everyone was quick to get in on the joke, even companies that had nothing to do with phones. And who could blame them? Ads that take advantage of pop culture are very successful during the time that they’re relevant, and if they can poke fun at the shortcomings of another brand, even better.

Thus my idea: make fun of smart cars and advertise Beetles at the same time. I had this gem during a class activity using figurative language and kind of ran with it.

It’s like a smart car for regular sized people. Smarter than a smart car, because you can still move your legs. Do your part for the planet without feeling like a sardine.
And my personal favorite:

 These could be a whole series of print ads that are snarky, irreverent, and very VW. It also focuses on the value of VW, but the fact that it still provides comfort and motoring pleasure. Now that’s innovative.

Something I struggle with is sharing my ideas. I equal parts want to take full credit for them and don’t want to show them to anyone and be vulnerable which really ends up getting me nowhere. What right can I claim to ideas that I never put out there? And what’s more, I’ll never improve if I don’t put myself in a position to receive feedback and collaborate. In the same way that running with people who are in better shape than you helps you improve, so working with more artistic or creative people than yourself develops your own creativity.

So then, am I in some way obligated to share my ideas so that others have the opportunity to improve themselves, and even build off of my ideas? What if “intellectual property” is killing collaborative ideas?

That’s where the theory of the “collective brain” comes in. It says we are all neurons and working together will get us places we can’t even dream of but if we doggedly claim innovations and concepts as “belonging” to anyone, we aren’t going to get anywhere. Patent laws are supposed to promote the progress of useful arts but they have become one of the major roadblocks for technological innovation because people are taking credit for things like ‘swiping to unlock’. Come on now, that isn’t promoting anything.

And how does any of this relate to VW?

Well if you remember the post about all ‘new’ ideas being remixes of preexisting material, you’d know that this discussion is sort of irrelevant. I fancy myself original and creative but chances are, everything I come up with has been done at least once before, if not over and over throughout the history of humanity. Maybe I did actually manage to add something new to it, give it a different spin; at least I hope so, but really we only want to think we’re special..

“Original”

A super quirky guy (dyed, edgy hair, tattoos, hip clothes) buys a used car. It has weird bumper stickers on it, a funky colored steering wheel cover, fuzzy dice on the mirror, the list goes on. He hates all of it so he throws out the dice, peels off the stickers, removes the wheel cover, and is satisfied. For a while. But little by little he finds his own personality becoming part of the car. He adds ‘save the earth’ bumper stickers, puts a dreamcatcher on the rearview mirror, and buys all natural fiber seat covers. One day he looks at the car and realizes that he has come full circle and he laughs, then gets in and drives off.
“VW, make it yours.”

Eh. It’s not terrible. It throws enduring value in there, sort of subliminally, there’s definitely some motoring pleasure, and while there isn’t much in regard to playing up innovative design, two out of three’s not bad.

Here’s a bit of four minute thinking (which really ended up being twenty-ish minute thinking). the topic: chasing your muse (as inspired by yet another TED talk).

There’s a guy, young, attractive, but obviously stressed. He’s sitting at an outdoor cafe with a cup of coffee working on something and looks at his watch and makes a worried face. He has a notebook/sketchbook open and he’s obviously struggling with something. He glances up from his work and sees a beautiful woman in an ethereal dress looking at him from down the block. He hurries to gather up his stuff and leave as she is going around the corner. He gets up and goes after her but as he rounds the corner, she throws a smile at him and goes into a museum (ironic, I know). He chases after her and we see quick flip shots akin to the typical “Where are you, Scooby Doo?” chase scene with everyone going in and out of doors in a hallway etc. only in a building full of art. She eventually leaves and he follows her, wandering past lots of people on a crowded sidewalk, following glimpses of her the whole way. Eventually he stops and ends up sitting down to lunch with a friend. We see him explain but can’t hear the words. He gestures indicating his frustration and just how close he’s gotten before the muse eludes him again. The friend nods and listens, then talks for a bit himself. They get into a passionate discussion over their forgotten food and suddenly the camera pans to a previously unoccupied chair at their lunch table, now with the ethereal woman sitting in it smiling. She reaches out and touches his hand and then vanishes. At that moment he has a visible breakthrough. He yanks out his notebook and starts working furiously, thanks his friend, and rushes out. We see him working later that day, bringing his now complete idea to life. (And insert VW plug here?)

I like this idea as an idea, but it doesn’t actually relate to the brand, really. Sure there’s some innovation, and it could be a great thing, but it wouldn’t be a good ad because you wouldn’t know what product it’s selling or what brand it represents. You’d watch it and say “Wow! That’s awesome!” and then forget what brand it’s about. There’s actually an ad (the whole campaign is good, really) by GE about ideas that’s really powerful and also a great ad because you can still remember who the ad is about.

A few months ago I said that creativity was more like an old fashioned water pump than a faucet and that metaphor still holds very true. You can’t just become creative on demand, you have to practice (which is basically the whole point of this class). And like an old fashioned spigot, ill-use makes it harder to get the creative flow going again. Likewise, regular use oils the gears and makes things flow much more smoothly. I’ve been struggling with what I can only describe as rust in this metaphor. I put off and put off posts and I now have looming mass of work I have to catch up on by the deadline. It’s not a fun feeling. Procrastination only adds to the overwhelming feeling of having too much to do. So how should one who has neglected things for too long go about being creative on a regular basis again? Easy: start. The hardest part is really the easiest thing. Just starting somewhere, anywhere really, reorganizes that big scary impossible task into manageable steps. Losing weight is as easy as going to the gym that first morning because if you can do it, if you can get out of bed that first day, every day after that becomes possible. So anyway, here is me ‘working out’:

Premise: What if no one drove cars any more? How would VW convince people to?

Possiblities:

• Create/recall the emotional attachment between people and their cars. (“Your car misses you.” *sad love song* As the car stares forlornly at closed garage door.)
• Nostalgia: “remember the good old days when the journey was the best part of the trip? When free time on a long car ride meant a chance to catch up or just relax. Uninhibited because no one can fault you for not being productive while you’re driving. Time to just sit and think, listen to music, or read a book (so long as you aren’t the one driving, that is.).
• Economy. “Going somewhere in a group? Well you can carpool! This way you’ll all arrive at the same time, together!”
• Luxury. Sit back, relax, let the world wiz by at a charming 65 mph as you sip chardonnay and listen to old classics like “All About That Bass” and “Anaconda”. VW cars: the ultimate luxury throwback.

Why would you choose to drive if you didn’t need to drive? (Something else to explore: why wouldn’t you need to drive?..what if super powers were real and everyone could get places like that?)

• Privacy. Nobody there to judge you for blasting NSYNC in the privacy of your own vehicle.
• Comfort. Ditto goes for wanting to turn on the seat warmer when it’s seventy degrees outside.
• Pleasure. Maybe driving is fun for you. Or soothing. Therapeutic even.

I need to just pick one of these and go with it but none of them really speaks to me. Whatever, going with the very first idea: “Your car misses you.” Actually, I had this idea yesterday and I just saw something today when I was researching another post that totally relates.

Funny that I happened to stumble upon this after thinking of something so similar. The copy is really hard to read but it’s basically a cinderella story about the enduring value of the ‘ugly’ VW in the picture as opposed to a better loved “big beautiful chariot” that didn’t last as long. I was actually thinking more along the lines of a car missing its owner because they stopped driving for whatever reason, be it that parking was a hassle, public transit was more convenient, biking was healthier and better for the planet, whatever. I didn’t even think about the VW getting replaced by a ‘better’ car.

A forlorn song about forgotten love plays in the back ground. We see an older gentleman pull the car into the garage and get out slowly, lock the doors, and walk inside. Time goes by. We see a time lapse of the car sitting neglected, aging, gathering dust as stuff accumulates around it in the garage. Eventually someone throws a canvas car cover over it and the screen goes dark. The song winds down in blackness. Then the cover gets thrown off. The first few notes of a happy song play, we see a young man cleaning, first the garage, then the car, polishing and cleaning, checking the tires. Finally, he gets in and starts her up. She rumbles then hums and he pulls out of the driveway and into the street with a smile on his face. We see a flashback of the same street, the trees much smaller, and a small boy in the passenger’s seat peeking over the dashboard, and an older man driving and smiling down at him. Fade out.
“VW, Just as good as you remember.”

Wikipedia defines creativity as “a phenomenon whereby something new and in some way valuable is created (such as an idea, a joke, a literary work, painting or musical composition, a solution, an invention etc).” Okay, great. So how do we do it? Well that’s the tricky part, no one really knows. Alright, maybe that’s not entirely true, we do know some of it. We know that ideas are formed when new neuronal pathways are formed in the brain. We know being around other creative people can help. We have some pieces of the puzzle.

I was watching a TED talk the other day about creativity (I watched the whole series, actually) and not only did I learn a lot from it, but it also gave me a bunch of ideas. The speaker proposed that there is no such thing as a new idea, that everything is just a remix. He said that creativity consists of copying, transforming, and combining preexisting material. I relate to this so much because of how I go about gathering experiences in order to mold ideas. I see the things I come up with as new creations, but the raw materials I used are sometimes clearly visible. I am a mashup-maker. A curator of creativity. So in light of this acknowledgement, I’m going to make a mashup, a remix. I jotted down this idea awhile back and never did anything with it really but it it’s a fairly decent concept: a series of print ads in different art styles, preferably iconic like Picasso abstraction, pop art, etc. This could even tie into the mural idea as they could totally be both print ads and street art. I did a Picasso-ish one to show what I meant, but this could be neverendingly awesome. Do a creepy Tim Burton-esque one around Halloween, a Norman Rockwell around Christmas, the potential is overwhelming. For now, this is the one within my artistic breadth:

Distractions will be the death of me.

Things that keep me from doing what I should: Watching TV. Reading. My phone. I get sucked into shows and stories and forget about everything else. I stop doing whatever I’m doing to check my phone every two minutes. It’s incessant and pervasive now how much I’m on my phone. I do it without even thinking. I think I need to disconnect, just “unplug” for a day. I find myself obsessively checking my phone and my social media more and more recently (as I interrupt this sentence to look at a Snapchat) so maybe forcing myself to disconnect from those distractions will help me reset my mindset. No one needs to get in touch with me so urgently that I can’t turn off my devices for one day. I might even find myself with *gasp* some free time when every spare moment isn’t being used to look at my phone.

I’m also a fairly disorganized person. Okay, if I’m being completely honest, I’m a total scatterbrain. I struggle with ADHD which causes infinite frustration and extreme forgetfulness. I leave important items everywhere, have the hardest time with names (great at recognizing faces though), and I’m constantly forgetting about deadlines and assignments. My head is always in 100 different places and I have an incredibly hard time focusing on a single task long enough to get much done. So the little things slip through the cracks and the big things never get finished. I have developed ways to manage my own chaos, for one I write lists. They help me remember things. Another thing that I do is follow a basic set of rules. It’s something of a moral code, something of a maxim, but mostly it’s just another list. My way of organizing how I choose to live my life. I’m not going to write the whole thing here because some of those rules are really personal, some are just silly reminders to myself, but mostly it’s just common sense (even though sense isn’t all that common anymore).

It’s kind of funny that this is a post about focus and I keep getting off topic. Focus. I have a hard time with these posts for that very reason: I can’t focus. I’ll start one and get ideas for others, start researching and get totally off track, or just run out of steam. I’m so glad everyone else in the world is not like me or nothing would ever get done. Hurm, there’s an idea. Like how Nike is ‘just do it’, what if VW helps you ‘get it done’? Or something..

Playing with the recalled concept of this older ad:

Let’s do a humorous twist on a timeline and play the “what if?” game with VW:

What if everyone gave up when things got hard? What if things just didn’t work out?

What if the Wright Brothers had stopped trying after the first six failures?
What if Lewis and Clark had given up halfway to the Pacific?
What if Columbus had turned back when his crew wanted to?
What if Amelia Earhart had decided that the Atlantic was just to dangerous to fly across alone?
What if Paul Revere’s horse had gotten a broken leg?

None of those things happened, and they won’t have to now because VW gets you there. 

I don’t know that this idea fully encompasses any of the brand values but it sort of touches on enduring value and there’s a little innovation mixed in with the making of history. There’s something here but I just don’t feel like it’s done.