1. GET CREATIVE

2. When was the last time you came up with a creative idea?  This morning  Yesterday  Last week  Last month  Last year What was it? What motivates you to be creative?

3. “Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.” —Dr. Albert Szent-Györgyi (won the Nobel Prize in 1937 for discovering Vitamin C)

4. Johannes Gutenberg Rule breaker. User of crazy, foolish and impractical ideas as stepping stones to new ideas. He combined two completely unconnected things:

5. The wine press

6. Purpose: to apply force over a large area to squeeze juice out of grapes

7. The coin punch

8. Purpose: to leave an image on a small area like a gold coin

9. What if I took a bunch of these coin punches and put them under the force of the wine press so they left their image on paper?

10. The printing press with movable type Voila!

11. Great ads need to resonate with the audience, but they also must be relevant. An ad can be great entertainment, but not great advertising. Great advertising has a strategic mission to fulfill. Strategy is at the root of all great creative work.

12. Expect More, Pay Less We all know Walmart as the retail “big box” monster. But one company that has competed and found a sizeable niche is Target. Its “Expect More, Pay Less” positioning statement allows the retailer to deliver good value in pricing, but also tout a higher scale shopping experience. Target promotes a softer side that has resonated with customers. Although the recession of 2009 hit Target and other retailers hard, Target weathered the storm by sticking to its core advertising message. As the economy recovered, Target experienced increased revenues. Target has prospered by offering consumers an alternative to Walmart and by communicating that difference in advertising.

14. “To be great is to be misunderstood.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

15. Martin Luther King was seen as a troublemaker before he was universally seen as a saint. Ted Turner was laughed at when he first tried to sell the concept of a 24-hour news channel. Before Einstein was celebrated as the world’s greatest thinker, he was thought to be just a guy with crazy ideas. And in 1997, Apple was being called a “toy” that was only for “creative types,” and it was being chastised for not having the same operating system as everyone else.

17. “Think Different” Exercises Source: “A Whack on the Side of the Head” by Roger von Oech

18. An eccentric old king wants to give his throne to one of his two sons. He decides that a horse race will be run and the son who owns the slower horse will become king. The sons, each fearing that the other will cheat by having his horse run less fast than it is capable, ask the court fool for his advice. With only two words the fool tells them how to make sure that the race will be fair. What are the two words? Exercise 1.

19. What is this figure? Exercise 2.

20. Take a sheet of newspaper. Put it on the floor so that when two people stand face to face on it, they won’t be able to touch one another. Cutting or tearing the paper is not allowed. Neither is tying up the people or preventing them from moving. Exercise 3.

21. VII Exercise 4. This is the Roman numeral seven. Use a single line to turn it into an eight.

22. Exercise 4. This is the Roman numeral nine. Use a single line to turn it into a 6. IX

23. It’s hard to think about things differently when most of our time is spent not needing to be creative. Driving, checking out at the store, popping a K-cup into the Keurig. Habit is the business of living. Without routine, life would be chaos and we wouldn’t be able to accomplish too much.

24. When it’s time to get creative, though, it’s your chance to open those mental locks. Forget the “right answer.” Forget the rules. Play. (Lego double-decker couch, anyone?) Forget what’s practical. Embrace ambiguity. Forget what’s logical. Dig around everywhere to find the golden bone.