Content marketing is based on research and data management, of course, but then
what? Larry Stultz, Ph.D. shares insights on where "Big Ideas" come from and how the creative process is defined by perception, understanding and experience.
Cyndi Greenglas: Where do Big Ideas come from?
Dr. Larry Stoltz: When I'm asked how big ideas come to creative people
or people in the marketing business, I tell them it's our life experiences that
give us understanding and perception. The things we go through in life dictate
or tell us how we interpret and give meaning to things that then we want to create
and give back to our customers, our clients. They give us ways of communicating,
but they're very emotional. There are some of these I'll talk about that people
have a lot of emotion about. When we as IMC professionals and creative people
work these experiences into our conceptual strategies and executions, our audiences
will be able to relate to our message. They'll not only thank us for knowing
them, but they'll be proud that they got it. Like, "Oh, I understand what that
creative message is because I've had that kind of experience, thank you for thinking
I'm smart enough to understand." So that's a really important way that we're
talking to our public, our clients. I will refer to two books by Michael Michalko—"Thinkertoys",
and another called "Cracking Creativity." He recommends a method of thinking
that is called random stimulus response. You can randomly select any number of
anything and use those to draw connections. He spends a lot of time talking about
random words, random objects, random images, random aromas. I throw in aromas,
textures, sounds, colors and shapes too, because those are triggers. We use those
to think. If you take a randomly selected group of words for instance, you list
the characters of each of those words. This list might include a list of five
words, and what he gets into is how you come to find the characteristics of those
words and draw associations between those, anything about those words and then
force connections. The more connections you make, the more likely you are to
find a big idea, or not. Maybe you won't, then you move on to another set of
words.