A framework for creativity

If you work in the creative space, then you have probably heard a variation of these at multiple points in your career. Creativity, by definition, is the ability to generate new, original, and valuable ideas, solutions, or artistic expressions. The caveat here is that this is a totally subjective concept. What creativity means may differ significantly from one person to the next, but don’t pull your hair out just yet.

Creativity involves thinking (and thinking very hard at times) beyond conventional boundaries, combining different concepts in innovative ways, and approaching problems from fresh perspectives. Creativity can manifest in various forms, such as art, science, business, technology, and everyday life, and is often characterised by originality, imagination, and the capacity to see things differently. It is a fundamental human trait that drives progress, innovation, and cultural development.

For creatives in marketing, the ability to tap into that is an essential skill that will be called upon regularly. The two natural questions that would arise from this would be “How do I foster creativity?” and “Can I learn to be more creative?”.

I strongly believe that with the right framework and environment, anyone can be taught to think more creatively.
Here is my approach towards creating a framework that enables creativity:

1. Understand the objective/s

With enough coffee and time, pretty much anyone can sit down and come up with ideas. However, if these ideas don’t address an issue, provoke a thought, inspire action or engage your audience, then what is the point?

The first step should be gaining an understanding.

What does the client/brief aim to achieve? What does this mean to the end-user? Why is this important? Why should people care?

Purpose: Understand the ultimate goal of your creative process.

Scope: Set boundaries to focus creativity without stifling it. If there are no boundaries, it is easy to get ‘lost in the creative’ and lose sight of the objectives.

Research: Gather as much insight on your target audience, the market/industry your client operates in, what drives consumer behaviour, what is their perception of the offering?

Creativity requires context. Without this, the ideas are reduced to random rambling. At DarkMatter, I encourage our creative team to really deep-dive into any brief we get handed – the more context we can establish, the better informed the end result will be.

2. Cultivate a creative environment

The best ideas sometimes come at the most bizarre times.

As a creative, you need to pay special attention to what sort of environment allows your team to channel their creative and strategic thinking. You need to create an environment that encourages free thinking, while simultaneously allowing for the creativity to be stress-tested for viability.

Safe space: Encourage risk-taking without fear of criticism or judgement. Build an idea-friendly space where team members are free to think out of the box and can test their creativity against the brief.

Diverse perspectives: Diversity is often the catalyst to amazing creativity. Bring together individuals with different viewpoints and experiences – and in South Africa, demographics.

Inspiration: Surround yourself with stimulating materials, such as art, books, and nature.

With enough rational thinking, probing and testing, and a firm grasp of reality, any idea can be reworked, altered and panel-beaten into a great idea. Encourage your team to participate in brainstorming sessions, create mind maps to visualise connections between ideas and challenge assumptions.

3. Build structure into your creativity

Creativity needs to be purposeful and aligned with specific goals.

Structure is required to build a solid foundation on which we can build creativity. Structure essentially breathes life into ideas. You need to find a balance between free-thinking with organisation and strategy for the best results.

Design thinking: A solution-focused approach that involves empathising with end-users, defining problems, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing.

Divergence and convergence: Start with divergent thinking to explore a wide range of ideas, then use convergent thinking to narrow down and refine the best ones.

Creative tools: Use SCAMPER (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, reverse) to guide idea generation.

4. Feedback loops

‘Getting lost in the sauce’ is relatively easy and common (I could write a number of articles around this), especially with creatives. An easy way to combat this is to create solid feedback loops at each stage of the creative process to ensure that your creative is in line with the brief.

Encourage continuous improvement of ideas through feedback and gather input from different team members to refine ideas. Oftentimes, truly amazing creativity is unearthed in the feedback process, and this is often when the idea gets refined and tweaked for the best impact.

5. Incorporate fun

Not every brief that comes your way will be the most interesting and exciting.

Accept this now and your life will be much better. As a creative, you need to learn to tap deep into yourself in order to find the fun in the creative process, even when the work feels dry.

Creativity is best served with fun. Get your hands dirty and get your explorer hat on. Build quick, rough versions of ideas to explore their potential with your team.

From my experience, I tend to have better ideas when I let go and start having fun with the brief. Fear is the apex predator of creativity, incorporating fun into your creative process is a good way of overcoming this.

6. Be flexible and adaptable

I ask myself these questions: Can the idea be expanded on? Can it be applied differently to address different objectives? What is the natural progression of this idea?

Be willing to pivot or abandon ideas that don’t work. Detach egos from the creative process, the more you can objectively see the bigger picture, the more likely you are to achieve success.

Use feedback constructively to evolve ideas and not kill them. Being conscious and intentional about creating often distinguishes a brilliant creative.

7. Document and reflect

Creativity is a continuous process, the more you understand how your creative process works, the better equipped you are to tweak it to foster more creativity in the future.

Keep a record of ideas and thoughts and how they came about and regularly review what has worked and what hasn’t and, more importantly, why they did or didn’t work.

By establishing an effective framework, you create an environment conducive to flourishing creativity, leading to innovative and effective solutions.