Creativity on the Rise.

It’s interesting to speculate on how human consciousness evolves as the result of technology. When the printing press was invented, people began to read more. Eventually, consciousness shifted and become more knowledge based and “interiorized.” What effect is the Internnet having?

 

In his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, best-selling author Daniel Pink argues that today's workplace has shifted from an "Information Age" of knowledge to a "Conceptual Age" of creativity and right-brained aptitudes.

 

Who knows where this will lead. One thing we do know. Right-brained attributes like design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning connect with people. By developing and cultivating these six "senses, workers can increase their value in today's workplace. In other words, creators and empathizers have the competitive advantage in today's economy.

 

One of the most right-brained creatives I’ve met is a guy named Mark Fenske. I heard him speak at the Creative Summit held in Minneapolis back in the late 1990s. An ad god from Weiden Kennedy, he had big-time credentials. He founded the Bomb Factory, created the “Right Now” music video for Van Halen and became the voice of Subaru telling car buyers not to be snobs — to name a few. Yet he took the stage with humility, wearing jeans, a flannel shirt and work boots. His slide show about the creative process blew me away.

Here’s a sample slide: “When you walk, things move toward you.”

 

What he meant was pretty simple, yet the way he put it was completely original. Taking steps to solve a creative problem — doodling, flipping through a magazine, thinking, brainstorming, researching, engaging in word associations — eventually puts us in a right-brained state of mind and creates the conditions for insight.

 

Creativity is a meandering process. Doing the work teaches us how to do the work. I looked Fenske up on the web recently. He’s teaching creative thinking at Virginia Commonwealth University. Here’s another quote: “Great work in advertising isn't about making people feel bad about who they are. Great work points at value. It finds people at their most human and says, there, like that. You must be as human as you can be to generate connections between products and living/breathing/thinking people.”

 

A good rule of thumb when creating branded content.