Creativity and social media

Bruce: Good stuff, lots of quotable comments. My faves: "If we lose the opportunity to inspire individuals to speak our message and ignite their community, someone else will." "Excite opinion leaders with greatness so they add your value to theirs." Thanks

That means a lot coming from you Edward. Thank you. I think one point that is often missed is that opinion leaders express their opinions for selfish reasons first. They may like the brand, they may love their community, but if they send brilliance into their network, it makes them look equally as brilliant. .-= Bruce DeBoer´s last blog ..Can I Get a Witness? =-.

I think it's also possible that the speed and multiple inputs can inspire instant ideas and certainly fresh ways of looking at things, so that creativity (figuring out what's possible now) needn't been limited to cut and paste. More input doesn't always mean more ideas, but in many cases it can lead to them.

Errr I should also add I really thought about the solitary genius versus crowd because I saw a trailer for Star Wars Uncut, which is the crowd-sourced Star Wars movie. It's pretty amazing, you should check it out because I would really love to see what you have to say about it.

No doubt the solitary "genius" will always prevail, though we use that word too loosely. Shakespeare, Mozart, Picasso, were geniuses. Ogvily maybe have been smart, even brilliant, but he was far from being a genius. That being said, there seem to be two things that social offers us. One, the chance to see what the crowd or co-creation might generate, and equally important, give the individual creator access to and energy from the community, both of which might help with the realization of something amazing. Finally, if you think about the auteur in film, from Fellini to Truffaut to Woody Allen, et. al. they imagined, wrote, directed and achieved in a one way medium. If they could or did work in a more interactive one, what might they have imagined and produced?

That's a question that boggles the mind. No doubt we'll see great minds working in the interactive medium in coming years. That is the most interesting question, actually. Because what about the artistic possibilities, really? I have no idea, though it's all exciting. Just the idea of the crowd working in the cloud for music alone blows my mind. All those projects where someone plays a drum track in Sweden and then they pair it up with a bass guitar from Zimbabwe, and it all comes together in a symbiotic whole! And here's the kicker: it's going to get MORE involved, MORE collaborative, the possibilities are going to get even MORE elaborate. We click and type and take pictures now, but we'll have so many more input vehicles as time goes by. What an exciting time to live in!!!!

To clarify: great auteurs working in high art in the interactive medium, because I just re-read my comment and realized that there actually _are_ several great minds working in the interactive medium. I was reading Philip Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint" a week or two ago. If that had been a book written today, can you even begin to imagine what its interactive campaign would have been like? Oh god, crowdsourced confession websites, iPhone apps that would never get approved (because of lewdness) and, for the truly perverse, an old media integration: branded organic liver.

Arafat: You have a vivid imagination yourself. See, this is what I'm talking about.

Agree. "The fact that he came up with the idea of making wine accessible to everyone." That is the solution to (if not a problem) an opportunity. A "creative" way of looking at the world of wine, marketing, potential of social media, etc. The videos themselves may or may not have intrinsic glow. But Gary and his idea do.

Are we starting to stray pretty far from "creativity's" meaning--in a marketing context--for it to mean much beyond a new idea about any aspect of a business: distribution (as in the example above), organizational structure, debt-management? I like your definition, Edward, because inspiring people to tell our stories extends our field into the consumer-mediated digital landscape, but is still something about which we, as marketers/creatives, can conceivably claim some expertise. We understand consumer behavior, we know how to inspire people and we know how stories operate in culture. We know considerably less about off-shore funding vehicles and supply-chain management. Some agencies have thought otherwise, and attempted to launch their own products. Their results so far have not been terribly impressive. But maybe I lack vision on this front, too enraptured by the "aura" of the traditional creative product, an imagination made manifest.

Manipulate strikes me as the wrong word and the antithesis of transparency. Inspire or evoke are more appropriate. What I'm interested in moving beyond is the old, traditional definition of creative as applied in our business (clever execution) and extending it to the ways we connect, accomplish, reach, and create conversation. What's creative, Gary Vaynerchuk's videos? Or the fact that he came up with the idea of making wine accessible to everyone. I say the latter. And, with the tools to produce and distribute now available to all, we can imagine in new ways. Not to deny the intrinsic glow or the magic of a story we want to share, but in the age of social media,this other stuff is equally deserving of the label "creativity."

Sounds like an idea in there, Sam. Must say I like the idea of the "intrinsic glow." Not sure there's such a thing as a negative glow, so I will use your phrase without it. And, of course, credit you for it. Also, part of the conversation vs owning it is another wise piece of advice, though a hard pill for some brands to swallow. The trick for marketers is learning to inspire it, stimulate it, welcome it without exploiting it.

Thinking of a brand which wishes to 'own' the conversation evokes an analogy of a person at a party who insists on all the attention. Whilst everyone else may listen (or have to listen), they invariably leave the party feeling perplexed by the loudmouth's incognizant lack of 'glow'. (good point on positive not being relevant.....perhaps negative glow would be a kind of anti matter!)

Scott: I have been looking at this from the narrow definition of creativity as it applies to marketing and the evolution of messages (now becoming conversations, memes, viral movements.) In the past we looked at creativity as cleverness; an attention getting message that felt fresh, fun, new, different, unexpected, provocative, and on rare occasion, culturally influential. You have been looking at something even more significant: the impact of all of this technology on creators (artists, painters, poets, writers, etc.) So yes, there are two ways to come at (most of this discussion seems to be about the former), in which case it's possible that the creativity isn't merely in what the crowd generates but in the stimulus we invent to inspire the crowd. That's a whole new kind of commercial creative focus. Your studies and writing, which are even more interesting, will, no doubt, yield even more complex questions before they unveil answers. Hope you're having as much fun as I am exploring all of this.

c_b_: True. As you can see from some of the comments in the post, there are lots of variations, but they all start with the acknowledgment that it's not about creating everything ourselves; it's about what the community does. Maybe we can inspire them with nothing more than an honest, authentic blog post. Or maybe we need the most originally conceived meme ever to jump start the process.

Sounds to me like you absolutely are. Check out some of the content at Hub Spot if you haven't already.

I guarantee that the more you use it the more new ideas will pop into your head. The pallet is larger, the colors more vivid, and the dimensions more interesting. But you've got to get out there.

Great summary. Since viral is over-used, I like the expression "inspire others to tell stories for us." Viral presumes it happens by itself. Inspire suggests we have to make it happen, or at least allow it and encourage it.

Agree. If we're looking for something pithier (aren't we always?) perhaps the word is simply "social". A social idea is one we want to pass around, wish we'd had ourselves, want to play with, discuss etc. In fact I think social ideas are probably more interesting than the term social media (Facebook, Twitter etc are phenomena on an epic scale, sure, but the channels & technology are less interesting than the behaviour & human interaction they encourage). I also just want to say how struck I am by @BenKunz's piece which you recently added to this post - the final paragraph of which bears repeating: "The ability to recast a cold hard brand into a warm human face is a miraculous change, yet it takes immense creativity to pull it off. By creativity, I don’t mean a brand position or message or high concept, but a creative use of a real team of humans to get on Twitter and other channels and present themselves as the real heart of a brand. It’s creativity with a shitload of effort. It’s risk and human souls. Perhaps that’s the most creative endeavor of all." It makes me briefly wonder about the difference between (what I perceive to be) creativity in its entire sense versus great customer service, say, but I really, really don't care. It's inspiring stuff. .-= Mel Exon´s last blog ..Mary Meeker’s Economy & Internet Trends Presentation 2009 =-.

Returning to this again. Perhaps there's a more challenging question in whether brands now need open, inclusive corporate cultures with great customer service much more than they'll ever need again the 'creativity' they habitually employ to wrap up their promises. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my answer would be: most businesses need both. A warm, humane approach & an appetite for grinding human endeavour are undoubtedly essential to any company, particularly those wanting to use new social tools online. However, for me this doesn't encompass the inspiration, the originality, dare I say the art, that I associate with the word creativity - even in a commercial context. There's still room for heartstoppingly brilliant beauty & wit, whether it's in great copy, design or user experience or, at a deeper level, a fresh take on what that brand stands for (yes, its 'high concept) that is motivating, galvinising, even moving. We're pretty evolved as human beings by now, we like that stuff too. Indeed, if Ben Kunz's words had been written on behalf of a brand, they'd be living proof. .-= Mel Exon´s last blog ..Mary Meeker’s Economy & Internet Trends Presentation 2009 =-.

That's why I said Ben is "one of smartest folks I've met out here." We, in our business, have a narrow definition of what is creative. Art and copy. A lot of us -- Big Spaceship's Michael Lebowitz, CP&B's Alex Bogusky, me -- are big believers that everyone is and should (or could) be creative. Certainly everyone in our business should be. If creativity is problem solving, and social media, networks, conversation, technology are the new canvas, then ideally we'll see new expressions.

Couldn't agree more. In fact, while the Bob Garfield's of the world predict our demise, this is the greatest creative opportunity ever.

Yes, Bob

Oops. Yes Bob Garfield has the wrong Groucho clip on his site. Rather than "I'm against it" he should have "Hello I must be going" .-= Rich Nadworny´s last blog ..What If the IAB Ran the Government? =-.