What is this thing called.. ‘Creativity’

What is creativity? The dictionary defines creativity as “to make or bring into existence something new.” You’ve probably heard of right- and left-brain theory. That is, the right hemisphere of the brain is the intuitive, abstract thinking part of the brain, while the left hemisphere is the seat of rational, logical thought. The right side handles big-picture stuff, while the left handles the details. Creativity is commonly thought of as purely a right-brain activity... head in the clouds, nothing logical about it at all. Well, through my own research and personal experience, I’ve discovered that creativity is actually a three-phase process. It’s the right and the left hemispheres of the brain working together in a balanced way combined with a physical act to bring the idea into form. It’s a holistic process of body, mind, spirit. My definition goes like this: Creativity is to make or bring into existence something new by generating ideas (right brain); developing, reorganizing, and refining them (left brain); and taking physical action (body).

Creativity began about 40,000 years ago when our ancestors first made tools out of bone and ivory. Before that they just made do with whatever they could find. A rock for a hammer, a sharp stick for a knife. Once human beings began making things, they began to take control of their own destiny –– thus embarking upon a path of intelligence and consciousness separating them from other animals. Human beings used creativity to survive and prosper, as well as to express themselves through art, music, and dance.

Human creativity grew steadily over the millennia until something rather interesting happened in the not too distant past –– the Industrial Revolution. Creativity brought forth incredible scientific discoveries, including the invention of the steam engine which lead to railroads and factories. These changes did much to add convenience to our lives, but there was one problem. People were needed to do the monotonous, non-creative jobs of operating the machines and working in the mills. Ironically, human creativity had gotten us to a place where creativity itself was no longer a requirement for survival –– we could exchange our time doing a repetitive task for a day’s wages. Creativity became optional, some might say a luxury, and like an unused muscle, creativity began to atrophy in the masses.

Even in the days of the Industrial Revolution, those with a more rural existence often expressed their creativity through music, quilting, and storytelling. Then another product of our amazing creativity, the invention of the radio, caused an even deeper divide between the “creatives” and “non-creatives.” Now, rather than telling stories or bringing out the instruments after dinner, the family would gather ‘round the radio and passively listen to music played by the most accomplished musicians in the world. We began to believe that creative expression was for the truly talented –– not for regular people like us. This “great creative divide” was further deepened by the advent of television. Now we were not only passive listeners, but watchers too. The steady stream of images and sounds from an outside source (when taken in on a regular basis) tends to numb our senses and diminish our creativity, while on the other hand, active entertainment –– like going to a concert, dance, or theater event –– stimulates creativity. Don’t get me wrong, I love radio, and I think both radio and TV have an important place in our lives, but it’s interesting to notice how they’ve affected our creativity.

So where does this leave us here in the beginning of the 21st century? If you take a look around, you can see that we live in a society in which about 90 percent of the people are left-brain dominant –– really good analytical thinkers –– and many people don’t think that they’re creative at all. Now this isn’t much of a surprise since we’re just beginning to come out of the Information Age. For the better part of a century, success has been defined by our ability to manipulate and analyze information, and as a result our educational system is almost entirely focused on developing left-brain analytical thinking. So, yes, it’s not surprising that we live in a world where creativity is indeed undervalued.

Can you see that there’s an opportunity here?  As someone who has based her entire professional career on using creativity I can tell you that creativity was often undervalued until recently. The tide is turning.

Take note of all the rapid innovation appearing around us, often it is the result of the young rejecting the sometimes stifling education system and using creativity and innovation to surge forward. Take the rise of Facebook for example, or Google. Both at their lowest denominator are simple concepts using technology to facilitate and both are outstanding examples of creativity.

If creativity is seriously lacking in our society and indeed your business, wouldn’t we have an advantage if we just invested a little bit of time and energy into exercising our creative muscles and tapping into our inner creative brilliance? Think of the advancements we can make around sustainability, social good and of course, the planet. Creativity and innovation are needed. Your thoughts... •

Marketing Mastery Bootcamp – a passionpuslator event

I was reading Sir Ken Robinson’s wonderful book ‘The Element’ and was struck by a wonderful story he led with as his opening and to illustrate that all of us have a natural wonder about us, it is just that over the years life experiences, education and our own belief processes eventually get in the way of us being creative and thwart for many of us our own natural talents and passions.

It goes something like this: ‘An elementary school teacher was giving a drawing class to a group of six year old children. At the back of the classroom sat a little girl who normally didn’t pay much attention in school. In the drawing class shed did. For more than twenty minutes, the girl sat with her arms curled around her paper, totally absorbed in what she was doing. The teacher found this fascinating. Eventually, she asked the girl what she was drawing. Without looking up the little girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” Surprised the teacher said, ‘But nobody knows what God looks like.”

The girl said, “They will in a minute."

A beautiful story,it certainly reminds us young children are wonderfully confident in their own imaginations. Sadly most of us lose this confidence as we grow up. Ask a class of first graders which of them thinks they are creative and they’ll all put their hand up. Ask a group of university students this same question and most of them won’t.

We are all born with tremendous natural capacities, and we simply lose touch with them as we spend more time in the world. Ironically, one of the main reasons this happens is education. The result is that too many people never connect with their true talents and therefore don’t know what they’re really capable of achieving.

This week I spoke to a large group of business owners keen to learn the in's and out’s of social media. All attendees had participated in a 7 day social media learning intensive from how to use twitter, facebook, linkein and so on.

My presentation was about putting it all together and guess what? All the training in the world won’t deliver results unless you put together a creative campaign that is different, innovative, fresh and inspires others to take action.

So I spent a lot of time during the presentation talking about creativity, innovation, the long tail and social media best practice campaign models. Why? You can learn all the how to’s of social media but if you fail to develop a creative campaign that resonates with your audience you miss a wonderful opportunity to inspire others to take meaningful action.

Why am I using the words inspire and meaningful? Maybe because I have yet to meet a business owner that doesn’t have a real purpose that they enjoy sharing and, this purpose has the potential to transform their brand into something that adds value and makes a difference. Be it a cause they contribute to, the way their culture provides service, a unique product offering and so on.

Just look at the great case study of Zappos. They sell shoes! But their whole customer and cultural experience is about delivering a unique customer experience no matter the channel of communication and in so doing they have empowered their employees and customers as evangelists for the brand. Be it on the phone, via email, in social media and more.

At our forthcoming Marketing Mastery Bootcamp in October we are going to explore exactly that with each attendee identifying what is the unique selling point of their company and how can this be turned into a campaign that makes a difference. Sure we’ll cover the nuts and bolts but it is my goal to ensure that everyone leaves with a complete A-Z blueprint for how they are going to drive marketing through their business to deliver the results they are seeking to achieve. That requires tow things: 1. The uh huh moment of what communication can truly make a difference and 2. A sense of personal passion to stay the course to deliver that and not get sidetracked by other things.

I’m really looking forward to working with 50 dynamic business owners and hoping you will join us too.

Is your business innovative enough in this era of social media?

The inexorable rise of web-based content, social media and mobile devices is forcing marketers to take a long hard look at their online brand presence and digital reputation. And this digital influence is happening at such a rapid rate that it is often hard for businesses to mobilise their efforts fast enough to keep up with the online consumer evangelism now taking place.

Smart businesses are reorganising resources, skills and processes to adjust to the new reality of conversational and participative media. Concepts of paid, owned and earned media provide a useful prism through which to plan campaigns and attract new customers.

This re-engineering, if you like means that no longer can you delegate your digital requirements to your resident ‘geek’. We are now in the era where everyone is a marketer and, a geek by default given the rapid offering of new technologies being launched almost daily.

But how do you know what technology and communication needs are suitable for your business. The offering is so diverse that it can be overwhelming. It starts with what you want to communicate and how? Mobility is the key. One company who specialises in assisting businesses assess their communication needs independent of any of the carriers or vendors is Team Telecom.

According to General Manager, Tony Carrozza, “Every business from 20 people to those employing thousands has productivity challenges. There is little place for off the shelf and customisation sends fear into the hearts of the finance manager. The market is highly customisable but sometimes the innovation is ahead of what the business actually perceives is possible. It is surprising how much technology out there that was designed for one purpose but deployed and viewed in another application can deliver significant productivity and financial benefits. The bottom line is to provide what the customer needs to communicate in this new digital era, not what the vendor has.” says Carrozza.

The other area business needs to get its head around is the notion of big brands continuing to establish complex and expensive marketing outposts in the form of corporate websites. These ''owned'' media formats provided a safe and controlled environment where brands could lay out their stall. This was the first phase of the web and is now outdated and restrictive to operating in the web 2.0 landscape.
Why? The game changed completely with phase two. Social media today consumes more than six hours of the average online Australian's time every month. Confronted, almost affronted, by the empowered customer many brands are soul-searching for a reason to engage and a manageable social media strategy.

Consumers, your customers, in every form are drawn to social media because it allows them to create their own experience. The opportunity to generate ''earned'' media in the form of word-of-mouth recommendations and advocacy within social networks, forums and blogs has sparked a gold rush with each marketing discipline laying claim to what will be a major source of income for the industry.

The successful brands online will be those that understand their customer, optimise their various marketing channels, identify the connection points between media types and deliver a consistent message or experience. The metaphor is a river, with a source of strategic messaging that trickles down to a variety of channel connection point.

The branded website, an owned media format, will play an important role in this mix but not in its current form. In most cases, traffic to branded websites is in decline. It's no wonder given the brand-centric rather than user-centric nature of most and their poor search functionality. Today's branded websites are, in the main, Web 1.0 hangovers, which prioritise presentation and usability over content and interaction. Content today is king.

The theory behind digital PR and marketing is that relevant experiences facilitated by brands will build relationships which make customers more inclined to take action, such as share content, click 'Like' in Facebook, make a recommendation to a friend or colleague via Twitter or make a purchase.

The mistake branded websites make is to act as e-commerce shopfronts or online brochures. They fail to understand the user and bury the subtle relationship-building content. Social media is user-centric; its currency is human voices and entertaining content. It provides brands with a platform for conversation. Here, value lies in the content as opposed to the context. There's no need for high value production. The human voice is, however, almost completely absent from branded websites.

A recent social media study by B&M found that just 20 per cent of the top 20 brands in Australia have a company blog. Yet we have seen the rise of super bloggers who influence your customers about everything imaginable. Suffice to say, if you don’t have a dialogue with your customers via a blog then you miss a powerful opportunity. Further, only 10 per cent of corporate newsrooms offered video downloads, yet You Tube dominates consumer and business downloads not just for fun but for intelligent insightful commentary. With social media, customers build relationships that shape discovery and add features that personalise their experience. Branded websites treat every customer equally, presenting each with a limited number of choices and predestined workflows. Future efforts will be highly personalised.

At the end, the same the same principles apply. It all starts with vision, strategy and innovation. Where do you want to be as a business. Not what have you been doing to date...Think outside the box, because anything is now possible. And that is the very issues, those that adapt cleverly to the new digital world with innovation have tremendous commercial opportunities. It is however challenging for old school businesses to move away from the linear mode of communication to the new interactive dialogue with customers and business.

If we crystal ball gaze it is fairly obvious that we will see the rise of a new band of trusted advisors in micro niche specific areas working with business. Why? Change is so rapidly upon us that it is simply impossible to keep up to the minute with every relevant change and that’s where these new micro advisers will emerge. Ensure you have trusted and expert counsel in the area of technology provision, marketing counsel who are abreast of new web 2.0 developments, establish appropriate social media policies and guidelines but make them empowering, you have the opportunity to turn everyone in your organisation into a sales person. And of course, work to make your customers your evangelists. There will be times when you have dissatisfied customers in the social media space too, take note, respond and work to correct their concerns quickly and transparently.

But to succeed in this new digital era it must start at the top, the CEO has to embrace this new paradigm of communication and rapidly to compete. Make sure your make it your business to explore the future and innovation is the key.

Have you determined who 'brand you' is?

I was at a workshop last week, at which I gave an impromptu “from the heart” mini-talk on personal branding in the era of social media.

People often question if they “need” a personal brand. Here’s the news – you already HAVE a personal brand. The only questions are, what is it? Are you projecting it effectively? And with the rise of social media, you also now have to think about your personal brand online. Is it congruent with brand YOU!

When people see you, think of you, and relate to you, words and images and feelings come to mind. That is your personal brand. If people who know you think “friendly,” “helpful,” “kind,” when they see you and talk about you, you are well on your way to possessing a positive personal brand. Of course, you can easily see the flip side of this as well…

So, you have a brand. Do you know what it is? What distinguishes you from the teeming hordes of humanity? What are you known for? Here, you need some self-examination, maybe some personality profiling (I found the Gallup books on Strengths to be particularly helpful), and some honest friends to help you distill it down.

What you’ll find is a constellation of qualities, and perhaps 1-5 characteristics that really stand out. Those are what you build your brand on. And, once you really have a grasp on it, you can communicate to people much more effectively what you’re all about. Where you fit in. Even what your future business endeavors should look like. You project your brand NOW – but you can project it more effectively when you actually know what it IS, and feel comfortable in your own skin.

What is my personal brand? I listen, analyze, distill, and rapidly find the core, then communicate it fairly effectively. This becomes my brand voice.

Let’s make one distinction. There is your personal brand essence, which is that grouping of personality traits, character traits, strengths, and capabilities that make you you. Then there is your personal brand role, which is how you function in the world and marketplace. Your role may change, but your essence remains the same, and hopefully, your functional and professional role is increasingly aligned with who you (essentially) are.

I’ve had live and on-line conversations with several people in the last few months who are wrestling with how to define themselves, and project their personal brand. As it turns out, my core competencies of analyzing, distilling, and expressing makes that a very enjoyable and meaningful exercise.

You don’t have to be a personal branding guru, or a consultant, a blogger, or an entrepreneur, to have and project a brand. You simply have to have a pulse. And a willingness to discover what really makes you tick. You DO have a brand, and you DO have something to offer. What endeavor could more rewarding and noble than identifying that brand and running with it?

Ensure your brand essence shines with your social media strategy

Every enterprise has its own unique personality. When it comes to social strategies, this personality shines through loud and clear. Just as we learn to identify and embrace our individual personalities, we must also recognize that no two organizations are exactly alike. Which stands to reason, then, that enterprise social media is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. When it comes to social strategy, there is no universal formula or magic bullet when it comes to driving ROI.

I find this to be a major source of contention with the brands I consult. They've read an article or they've consulted with an "expert," and they've learned all about what they should be doing. But winning internal executive support proves to be daunting, and attempts to sell the concept typically end at a brick wall. Is this because executives just don't get it? To the contrary, it's because in most cases, they're trying to turn the enterprise into something it's not.

To be successful, a brand's social strategies must complement its personality -- not compete against it. The most successful social media initiatives occur when the strategy is aligned with the core values and personality of the brand itself. We don't ask a wallflower to be the life of the party, nor do we expect a social butterfly to thrive without wings. Whether your enterprise is the thrill-seeker or the strong and silent type, this article is intended to provide both the inspiration and the tools needed to start driving value through your social strategies, in ways that are genuine, realistic, and attainable.

Discover your brand's social personality, along with the keys to unlocking the potential within.

You flitter, you flutter. You are drawn to those with the power to increase your popularity. Taking pride in being on the cutting edge, you were probably one of the early adopters of company blogs and Twitter. You like to be where the action is, darting from one trendy application to the next. On the surface, you've created an impressive following and have successfully led your organization through unchartered territories. But when the conversation turns to ROI, your attention is quickly diverted to a new tactic.

The risks:
Every marketer understands the thrill of winning the attention of customers. But a strategist needs to understand what comes next. "One million fans on Facebook" is only important to your business if you can effectively leverage those connections to drive to a conclusion based on your goals as a business.

Consumer networks are constantly changing and highly dependent upon numerous uncontrollable variables. Social butterflies have a tendency to gravitate toward the buzz-of-the-day without considering the ramifications of "here today, gone tomorrow." Banking enterprise strategy on shaky ground, or superficially scratching the surface of what should be a deep strategy, does not promote the sustainability needed for longer-term success. Without focus and dedication, you can end up disappointing your networks, and will likely fail to receive executive support for future campaigns due to your inability to garner and prove results.

The opportunity:
With a widespread social media presence, you have breadth. But do you have depth? Consumer activity is taking place on consumer networks such as Twitter and Facebook, and it is essential to position your brand where the interaction is happening. Your curiosity and open-mindedness ensure your ability to remain on the cutting edge of consumer engagement strategies, usually out in front of your competition.

Anchoring your social media initiatives in an enterprise-wide strategy will help you strengthen your connections and add depth to your campaigns. Consider ways that bridge your vast social interests with your enterprise. Open authentication, for example, can inspire your fans and followers to leverage existing credentials they may already have from Facebook or Twitter to join your own branded online community.

As trendy consumer networks come and go, your brand presence will remain.
You will gain some serious momentum when you can keep those 1 million Facebook fans engaged from one campaign to the next. And when you've shown the rest of the enterprise how it, too, can capitalize -- providing sales with new leads, or identifying customer concerns and proactively handing them over to customer service while the account can still be saved -- you will be the enterprise's rising star.

Growing your business through the power of social marketing - Linked In

When I train corporates in how to integrate and indeed use social media we often spend some time on LinkedIn. Why? So many people use it as static environment and forget the key - it's social, it's professional, it's about building your business network!

So if want to benefit from LinkedIn? Stop treating it as a dumping ground for your CV, blogs and business card!

Your web site may be sitting there waiting for visitors to come along but not so for LinkedIn because it has 60 million users who regularly visit. The best thing is that you don’t even have to pay to reach these 60 million people. You just need to figure out a way to attract their attention.

The paradox with online networking is that it is difficult to put into practice the usual nine influencing tactics of; reasoning, inspiring, inquiring, make them feel good, strike a deal, swapping favours, using silent allies, authority and force. There are three reasons why this is the case.

Firstly, most people joining LinkedIn are focused on themselves and use a discussion or comment as a disguise to leave their ‘online’ business card. Secondly, most people tend to fallback on reasoning to get their point across and a discussion then ends up as a verbal arm-wrestling contest. Thirdly, they underestimate the time, effort, and skill required to engage in a fluid and dynamic conversation.

To get benefits from online business networking, you need to invest time and energy to build your reputation. It is your reputation that influences and attracts people. People want insight instead of Inmails. The more insights you share, the more people will see you as an expert. The more valuable you become in your network, the more people will be attracted to you and so your reputation grows. Over time, people starts to look to you to make connections with other people. In short, you become more than your CV, you become an invaluable asset in your network. In benefiting others, you become the benefit of online business networking.

Are you ready for the social media transformation?

The Internet and social media have transformed the way companies communicate with consumers. Are you ready for the next levels of change?

If you are a business owner you must be ready for these new wave changes. Don't get left behind. Here's a quick review.

1. Marketing is far more than just advertising. In fact the marketing, advertising and PR industries are themselves, going through the greatest shakeup their industries have ever known as they too learn knew ways of interacting with consumers.
2.PR is now a long way from a just a mainstream audience, it's the era of micro niches
3.People want to know you and your brand, they want authenticity, NOT spin
4. People want to be involved with your brand, to participate, they don't want sales propaganda
5. Marketing is about delivering content in the way your audience wants it, they choose. It is no longer one way
6. Marketing your company and or product now requires you to shift your thinking from mainstream marketing, to how you can reach vast numbers of underserved audiences via the Web.
7.PR is about your buyers seeing your company on the web in many different venues.
8 Public Relations is now 'public' relations, not media relations.
9. Great content is king and information sharing is a great tool
10. Everyone is now a marketer, PR agency and advertising agency all in one. Harness your supporters and listen to the feedback they give.