Creativity & Innovation – Ideas that Work

Creativity & Innovation – Ideas that Work

Being creative usually gives the impression to people, there are no boundaries, just wild ideas racing across a mountainside like a heard of wild horses. Yet when we’re done helping people understand the discipline it takes to catch those wild ideas, harness, tame and bridle them and put them to work productively, all without breaking their spirit – most of our audiences are excited to realize they too can enjoy riding one of those wild ideas.

We feel creativity is and has always been about influencing someone to feel something, do something, join something, think something or of course to buy something or even be something. (and yes, sometimes creativity’s sole job is to help entertain)

If being creative doesn’t do anything, the creative exercise is nothing more than an exercise. In my career, creativity has always had one of two jobs: 1) to help our clients motivate their customers to some action. Or 2) help leaders understand the doctrines and principles of how influence works so they can make something happen. – We usually call this Leadership, Sales, Advertising or Marketing, yet it is all about influence.

Officially defined, creativity is

A phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a literary work or a painting).
Characterized by the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions.
The tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.

And yes, creativity can be taught. But rather than taught, when we teach the formulas of creativity, we don’t teach as much as we help our audiences learn how to discover.

In today’s complex world there are many reasons creativity is in demand.

As humans, we have a need for novel, varied and complex stimulation
We need effective ways to communicate ideas and values
We need to solve a never ending supply of problems, many of them unique.

We help audiences to be able to view things in new ways or from a different perspective.

We help them to be able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives.

We help them to see things uniquely which doesn’t always occur by chance; it is linked to other, more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown.

There is no question there are certain characteristics of the creative personality, yet everyone will need to solve problems at some point, we will all need to learn to think differently as our world changes around us. We will all need learn to employ some of the tenants of creativity.

In our creative, yet effective way, when we help audiences understand how to generate “Ideas that Work,” they become more productive, more open to improvement, more able to recognize and develop solutions to problems and happier.

How do you measure it? – isn’t is subjective?

The Owner’s Kit - An Idea that worked

We had just completed our third successful client acquisition campaign for the nation’s largest cable TV company, garnering responses in the double digits and were glorying in our success at a client luncheon. I glibly remarked that at this rate, in a few more campaigns we would have 100% penetration and be out of a job.

The client turned to me and simply said. “Not with the turnover we have, we’ll never have 100% penetration.” When I inquired why, the answer was “people disconnect and move.” For weeks that thought hardly left my mind. I pondered over the absolute hopelessness of that statement. First that they could never get 100% (which is probably true) but that people turnover only because they move? I realized I had personally disconnected several times and hadn’t moved in any of those circumstances.

Getting back to the client a few weeks later we had a deeper conversation about customer turnover which was nearly 30%. A few other reasons for disconnecting were discussed and validated but the question that begged an answer was “What is it worth to keep a customer?” This question is applicable for every industry but with a 30% turnover the question has serious financial implications for this cable TV giant.

Though all the marketing efforts to date had been directed at client acquisition, we proposed spending money to keep a customer. We found one regional director willing to carve off enough of her marketing budget to test our theory. We won’t discuss the details of the campaign here but suffice it to say it was an “Idea that Worked.”

We tested a small segment of customers with our “Owners Kit” campaign which was a multi-piece educational campaign aimed at new customers. The test was successful and was expanded each year for three years before it became a nationwide mandate from corporate headquarters.

The campaign not only reduced customer turnover by 26% but it generated overwhelming customer satisfaction. In 6 different customer satisfaction areas measured, recipients of the “Owners Kit” averaged 64% satisfaction, whereas non-recipients averaged only 42%. It was estimated the just over $500,000 spent on the “Owners Kit” campaign generated nearly $16,000,000 in retained customer revenue.