Creative Think

Hooray for Mad Men!

I've never downloaded a TV program. Until three weeks ago, that is. iTunes ran a special for the season of Mad Men ($22 for 13 episodes) and I snatched it up. (I connected my Mac to my plasma screen for viewing.)

Mad Men is the creation of former Sopranos' writer-producer Matt Weiner. The show is about the advertising industry and is set in the New York City of 1960. The title refers to "Madison Avenue" and this was the dawn of advertising's "golden age."

In this world, everyone smokes. Everyone drinks at work (sometimes before noon). And the women are either secretaries or housewives. The show centers around star creative director Don Draper (3rd from left, played by Jon Hamm).

It was fun to see the creative teams come up with ideas for various products such as: Lucky Strike, Kodak's slide projector, Richard Nixon's Presidential campaign, Israel Tourism Board, Bethlehem Steel, and a New York department store. It was also a kick to hear them talk about the new art of "Brainstorming" and how to do it!

I thoroughly enjoyed this program, and was happy to see it renewed for a second season. (I was twelve in 1960 and it was interesting to re-enter that world again: people watched Twilight Zone and Leave It to Beaver.)

Mad Men just won a Golden Globe for best "Dramatic Television Series," and Jon Hamm won for "Best Dramatic Actor." (He is very good.) Congratulations!

Reverse Living

In a recent post, I shared a TV ad produced by Leo Burnett Italia called "Underwater World" that won the 2007 Clio Grand Prize. While poking around on the net, I discovered another ad also produced by Leo Burnett Italia. It runs forty seconds: check it out.

This is a powerful ad. And I hope its message is heeded by those at whom it is directed.

But it reminded me of what a wonderful mind-opening technique looking at things in a reverse manner can be.

Here is one of my favorite examples of "reverse." I'll quote a section from my book, A Whack on the Side of the Head, called "Reverse Living":

Life is tough. It takes up all your time, all your weekends, and what do you get at the end of it? Death, a great reward. The life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, and get it out of the way. Then you live for twenty years in an old age home, and then get kicked out when you’re too young. You get a gold watch and then you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement.

You go to college and party until you’re ready for high school. Then you go to grade school, you become a little kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating, and you finish off as a gleam in somebody’s eye.

What can you look at backwards? How might you see it in a fresh way?

Clio Grand Winner, "Underwater World"

As the Nobel-prize winning chemist Albert-Szent-Gyorgi put it: "Discovery consists in looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different."

Well, the people at Leo Burnett Italia (Milan) did this for their client Aqualtis. They looked at "dirty clothing" and thought "exotic underwater scene" to create the above ad, "Underwater World." This ad was just announced by Clio as the Grand Prize winner in the "Television/Cinema" category.

I had to watch it twice before I realized that the sea creatures were clothing. Nice job!

Clio Print Ad Winner, 42 Below

The Clio Awards for best print ads were announced recently and the Grand Prize Winner was a set of pieces for 42 Below, a vodka brand. The agency is Saatchi & Saatchi, New York (Brian Ahern, Copywriter; Tony Granger, creative director; Philip Bonnery, Art Director).

The ads are clever, funny, and a bit naughty. Each is comprised of a series "clip-art" images. As you read through them, you create a story, with the offbeat punch line at the end. Here is an example.

As you read through this several times, you'll figure out the story and come to realize why this particular one is called "Transvestite."

If you'd like to see the others in this campaign, go to this Clio link, and then click on the little image boxes where Grand Prize winner is listed, and you'll get to see the others: "Flight Attendant," "Do It Yourself," "Office Party Blackout," "Government Eavesdropping," "Bareback Mountain," "Sheep," and "Casino." Lots of offbeat humor here!

My All-Time Favorite Print Ad

The American artist Jasper Johns was once asked what was involved in the creative process: “It’s simple," he replied. "You just take something, and then you do something to it, and then you do something else to it. Keep doing this and pretty soon you’ve got something.”

This idea is reflected in one of my all-time favorite print ads, which was created in the 1960s by Charles Piccirillo to promote National Library Week. The headline consisted of the alphabet in lower case letters like so:

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

It was followed by this copy:

“At your local library they have these arranged in ways that can make you cry giggle, love, hate, wonder, ponder, and understand.

It’s astonishing to see what these twenty-six little marks can do. In Shakespeare’s hands they became Hamlet. Mark Twain wound them into Huckleberry Finn. James Joyce twisted them into Ulysses. Gibbon pounded them into The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. John Milton shaped them into Paradise Lost.”

The ad went to to extol the virtues of reading and mention that good books are available at your library. There are several messages here, but to me the most important is that that creative ideas come from manipulating your resources ­— no matter how few and simple they are.

With this outlook, we try different approaches, first one, then another, often not getting anywhere. So, what we’re talking about is attitude of experimenting and trying different approaches, first one  and then another. You rearrange things and turn them upside down. You may ask some “what if?” questions and look for hidden analogies. You might even challenge the rules. And, as a result of this playing around, you just might come up with a workable new idea.

Question: What basic resources at your disposal can you manipulate into something new?