Introduction
Creative ideas flow in and out of our mind every day, however we only act on them if we decide to. If your entrepreneurial like me, then you know what I am talking about; a creative idea pop’s up and it gets you really excited. In the same way, your logical brain goes to work in order to validate the potential of the idea. Most ideas get crushed when you block them out, put them away or pitch to someone in your team who doesn’t endorse it.
Creativity vs Strategy
With social media, I have been testing how much effort should be emphasised for creativity and how much focus should be involved with strategy. Almost all marketing campaign outcomes will differ, thus it depends on the manager, product or service and industry. Many believe creative ideas are the backbone that should drive a company’s innovation. Perhaps, creative ideas should be considered as a major portion of the marketing process. For example, as a rule of thumb, marketers may focus 30% creativity and 70% strategy. In summary this is normally how I operate, but if you have a seperate opinion I would love your feedback below.
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Inspiration
Inspiration is described as a divine influence or action believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation. Subsequently, where would our creative ideas come from if we didn’t have a guide to cross reference. For instance, movies, TV shows, articles, books, websites, people and even nature are all forms of inspiration. As an example; “Jaguar” is a car company engineering some the most prestigious sports cars in the world. The brand name and image is of the jaguar cat species, a compact and well-muscled animal, is the largest cat in South America, and one of the largest carnivorous mammals in Central North America. The brand image depicts the muscular, jaguar pouncing in a forward motion position as if on the attack. I bet the marketing team at Jaguar have creatively and strategically ensured that customers understand the meaning behind the brand – whether it be symbolic.
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Imagination
Imagination is the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses. It may be easy to imagine things up when as a child through play, but as we become adults our focus shifts away. For example, when I was a child I used to be an expert at creating back stories and making things up through play. However, as I grew up and became an adult, my peers would tell me to get a job and stop playing around. In short, the activity of focussing and accessing imagination and creative ideas is replaced by rules, distractions and pressures. For that reason, I have found that to unleash my creative ideas I must completely stop the world and allow myself to think alone i.e. “day dream”. For example, I do this best, late at night when everyone in the household are asleep.
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Think outside the box
In this section, all I can give you is some serious advice and that is; don’t conform to the status quo. For instance, think deep thoughts and allow your mind to stretch the limits of possibilities. To illustrate, if you clone yourself to think like everyone else, you will not be open to the many possibilities. More than often in todays world, we fear too much of what others think of us, but what we are really fearing is exile and disappointment. The world needs to experience your creative ideas and you deserve to share them no matter what. For example read the life of Nikola Tesla, and you will see that humans are capable of unimaginable potential.
Conclusion
In conclusion, be open-minded, expand your thinking beyond what you think is possible and start to say to yourself “what if”. More importantly, allow yourself the freedom to be alone and see where your mind takes you. Furthermore, get out of that box, never let fear control your beliefs and especially do not let it control your mind.
