There is little doubt that that PR has become much more strategic and sophisticated than it was when I first entered the field nearly 30 years ago. And yet as PR moves ever closer to the top of the communications table, it is still creativity that, more often than not, wins the plaudits, attracts new business and keeps clients on board. Indeed, Maurice Saatchi went so far as to say that “Creative thinking is the last legal way to secure an unfair advantage”.
Training for creativity
So why is creativity not more of a hot issue in PR? Why does it not gain even a tiny share of the attention and discussion given to, say, Social Media? My observations from 20 years in consultancy followed by nearly ten in training, is that consultancies don’t really know what to do about creativity.
Some do a bit of training from time to time; some take the attitude that you can’t train anyone to be creative - ‘you’re either creative or not and we’ll rely on the ones who are’; and some make a big gesture of appointing a Creative Director, of whom little is heard subsequently.
I shall be back at the PRCA for my Awaken your Creativity training course on May 11, planning to prove two things. Firstly, you can learn the principles of creativity; secondly, everyone has creativity within them – they simply need tools with which to draw out their creativity.
Principles of creativity
In learning the principles of creative thinking three things need to be understood:
Firstly, creative thinking is intrinsically difficult. It goes against the way our brains work, which is to tell us what we already know about a given topic, shutting out what doesn’t fit. That’s pretty much the opposite of what we need when we are looking for ideas!
Secondly, creative thinking is hard work, which means that time needs to be properly invested in the process. It took Thomas Edison many hundreds of attempts to create the light bulb, but he saw none of them as failures; each one, he said, took him a small step closer to the solution. More recently, David Walliams and Matt Lucas responded to calls for another series of Little Britain with the revelation that such a task takes them 10 months, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and longer and more days when necessary.
Thirdly, effective creative thinking is not all about lateral thinking / thinking outside the box / generally going a little crazy. All of these do have a place within the process but one needs to know how and when to use them. Above all, effective creative thinking is a highly disciplined process that needs order and structure. For that reason I use the original rules for creative thinking developed by Alex Osborn back in 1941 and I stick to them rigidly.
Structured creativity
Too much focus on Lateral Thinking is one of the things that gives brainstorming a bad name and it is very difficult to manage a laterally-led session without a highly experienced facilitator. My Awaken your Creativity course therefore looks at the origins of Lateral Thinking, how it fits into a structured Creative Thinking session and how the spirit of Edward De Bono’s 40-year-old principles can be applied today.
So if you want to learn how to plan and run a brainstorming session that really works, join us at the PRCA on May 11. We also look at how to evaluate the ideas you generate, creativity for specific areas of marketing and PR and how to sell your ideas. After all, if you come up with a truly original concept it may actually be hard to sell to your client because they have nothing with which to compare it. There are also lots of real life brainstorming sessions so you could go away with a bunch of new ideas for your client – as well as a complete manual on how to run your own sessions.
Creativity for everyone
Finally, what actually happens to those Creative Directors who are appointed with a big flourish only to go a bit quiet subsequently? Well, I discovered the fate of one of them just recently. “The problem was”, said the consultancy boss quietly in an off-the-record manner, “that everyone else gave up any attempt at being creative and just relied on him”. I have always believed that creativity should be everyone’s responsibility and I look forward on May 11 to showing how everyone can take part in the process.
This feature was contributed by Nick Fitzherbert, PRCA course trainer. It is taken from their course 'Awaken Your Creativity' taking place on May 11. For more information please visit the course page PRCA website by clicking here.