• Where: In person
  • Frequency: Single session
  • Duration: Full day
  • Type of participants:  Single agency, single agency plus clients or multiple agencies together
  • Experience level of participants: All levels welcome
  • No. of participants: 12-50
  • Price: USD$ 5,000

what will you learn

At the heart of this workshop (one full day, two half days) is the thought that the brain is a muscle. If you exercise it, it becomes stronger and more agile. Creativity is an innate human characteristic and can be developed.

This workshop is split into four different sections.
1. Creativity – what is it? Why do we need it? Why don’t clients do it themselves?
2. Ideas – we use the word indiscriminately to mean a raft of different things. What sort of idea are you trying to create?
3. Inspiration – how to get ideas, quickly
4. Clarification and evaluation – how to assess an idea and allow it to develop.

Designed with nine practical tools for attendees to start using immediately in their day-jobs, the workshop is interactive, fast and fun.
They will learn that there are three ideas woven together in any and every piece of paid-for communication. The brand idea, the strategy and the creative idea. The key question is, which of these allows you to differentiate most noticeably?
In understanding the ‘hierarchy of ideas’, they will learn how to create advertising with a point. And since 85% of all advertising is unnoticed, or pointless, this is useful.
They will learn that idea and execution are not the same. When you know what your idea is, it becomes easier to amplify and easier to sell. This sounds a lot easier than it actually is.
The workshop is as relevant for writers, art directors and designers as it is for strategists and account managers. In fact, working together on the agreed brief, they learn to appreciate each other’s different skill sets.

 

Part 1
Creativity – what is it?
• Exercise: A picture is worth 1,000 words
I get everyone to draw a picture. It’s a “creative brief”. Most people present the execution, rather than the idea, one of the themes of the day. It also establishes the importance of the right-brain in advertising.

• Creativity – an innate human characteristic.
• The 4 points of conflict in the creative process.
– How you are wired.
– How you think.
– Exercise: Drink Guinness because…
– How you see.
– Exercise: Look at or look into?
– How you dream.
Learnings here are
1. Many clients are left-brained. Take care to explain idea and execution separately.
2. Agencies often over-complicate things.
3. Many briefs are too abstract to be able to inspire great ideas.
4. It is rare for the team to share common objectives before a pitch or a big new brief.

Part 2
Ideas – deconstructing communication.
• What’s a BIG idea?
• The Hierarchy of Ideas. The difference between a business proposition, a marketing platform and a creative execution.
• Untangling meaning and expression.
I created this tool to show Unilever how communication works. Being clear about the distinctions between the brand positioning, the strategy and the creative platform will bring focus to a project and save the agency much argument not to mention time and money.

The brief today
Brand X: beginning at the bottom.
It’s always good to work to a live brief because it can transform the training from a cost into an income stream.

Part3
Inspiration

The creative toolbox.
Four different routes to a breakthrough strategy.
• Draw the problem. Draw the solution.
• Challenge assumptions.
• Parallel Worlds.
• Oblique Strategies.
Einstein said given an hour to save the world, he would spend 58 minutes considering the problem to be solved. He was famously right brained. In this section attendees are asked to use their right brains and draw.
We work through at least three other techniques for generating big strategic ideas.
Oblique Strategies is musician Brian Eno’s version of lateral thinking.

Creative execution
The 7 Ideas
• Who or what can pitch the argument?
• What’s the problem?
• Show me
• What’s it like?
• Whatever you think, do the opposite
• Simple human truths
• Borrowed interest
There are only seven basic communications ideas, ‘master’ ideas, as it were. This tool helps strategists and account managers write meaningful briefs. It also helps creative people start to have focused ideas immediately rather than wait for inspiration to strike.

Part 4
Clarification

Review
Teams sift through their ideas and work out what to present
• Presentations
• Fire…Ready…Aim
• The 10 Key Questions
• 6 Hats
The creative review meeting is often determined by status. Here are two tools to make assessing the work as objective as possible. Also, to encourage the idea to morph into something better.

Summary of the day(s)
• Top 3 take-outs
• Agreements and action points
• Close

 

who should attend

Ideally creatives, account managers and strategists all together. One of the key takeouts is that creativity is a team sport.

 

Patrick Collister

Patrick was the Executive Creative Thingamajig and Vice Chairbob of Ogilvy & Mather London, the Chief Creative Doodah for the EHS Brann network of European DM agencies and, until 2018, Head of Clever Stuff for Google’s creative thinktank in Northern Europe, The Zoo.
In 2022 he was made a Fellow of the IPA.
He has won shedloads of creative awards but is quite pleased with his 10 Cannes Lions.
He has run training programmes for adidas, Lego, Newell Brands and Unilever among others and has created bespoke programmes for D&AD, the IPA, Canada’s ICA and Malaysia’s 4As.
His book “How to Use Creativity and Innovation in Business”is published by Macmillan and is available on Amazon for a measly one penny if you buy it second-hand.

tesitmonials

“I have every reason to be grateful to Patrick for the fabulous professional advice he has given to me and my colleagues. His is a unique viewpoint derived from his years spent in advertising and direct marketing; every person I have sent on his courses has emerged from the experience marvelously rebooted and re-energised.”
Rory Sutherland
Vice Chairman, Ogilvy Group UK

 

other programmes offered by this provider

Briefing and Appraising Creative Ideas – input and output are correlated. The better the brief, the easier it is to judge the work.
Presentation Skills – selling creative ideas is an art starting with writing a coherent deck.
Follow Me! Learning to be a more inspiring creative director.
The New Rules of Communication – ways to engage in a world that hates advertising.
Righter Writing – the fine art of writing copy

 

please note

For any programs delivered in person, the provider’s travel and other ‘out of pocket’ costs will be additional to the program fee and will be advised by the program provider in advance, depending on time and distances involved. This will not apply to online programs.

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