Lame Excuses for Being Boring - #2

Excuse #2:

"We've always been this way. This is who we are."

Being creative in your work does not mean departing from your identity as a company or as a brand. Being creative does not mean that you must become Apple, or 3M, or Southwest Airlines, or Starbucks, or Procter & Gamble. In fact, imitating other "innovative" companies is not "innovative" at all.

Being creative means proactively looking for ways that your brand can be even better at who your brand is supposed to be. Becoming even more aligned with your corporate identity, by creating greater value for your customers within that context. Be creative within the boundaries of who your brand is.

So who is your brand? What is your brand promise? Is your brand about luxury and status? Then find ways to pamper your guests in even better, more serving, more extravagant ways than before. Is your brand about family fun? Then spur on your imagination - and create amazingly fun products and environments that encourage kids (and their parents) to use theirs, too. Is your brand about bare-bones, no-frills, low-cost? Then be innovative about how you can cut non-necessities to help your customers save money. Is your brand about customer service? Then bend over backwards for your customers. Is your brand about drawing people together? Then probe for ways in which your products and locations invite people to share life.

Let your brand be itself. But make it the absolute best self it can be.

Lame Excuses for Being Boring - #1

I'm starting to collect a series of lame excuses for why a company doesn't have creative products, services, marketing, or marketing communications.

Here's the first:

"We can't afford to hire the top creative minds."

Then cultivate creativity among the team you already have. Research shows that for persons with enough intelligence to have attended college (an IQ of about 115 or higher), success is less a product of innate talent than of preparation, practice, and opportunity. (Read Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers for more information on this.)

Your marketing department, or product design team, or logistics personnel, or supply chain managers, have the capacity to think of creative ways to better serve your customers. To communicate better, to design better products, to reach them better, to provide better value (greater quality or less expense). You need to inspire them.

How do you inspire their creativity? Give them an afternoon at the movies - watching YouTube videos of excellent tv commercials and human zaniness. Send them to a park, or museum, or art gallery for the morning. Take them to lunch at a themed restaurant. Hold your next brainstorming session in a lime green room full of bean bag chairs, playdough, and whiteboards. Confiscate all pens - write with crayons instead. Have everyone name the most creative thing they've seen this week, then free associate to think of creative things that could work for your brand. Make your team act out a story using puppets (a story they make up as they go along, not one they know already).

Inspire creativity. Expect creativity.