Sometimes things are just meant to be....

I am sure you have all been in situations that are coincidental some call it fate others destiny, some just put it down to luck. I like to call it divine design, a phrase coined by Deepak Chopra, the author of the infamous ' Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. In this very book Deepak, talks about the law of least effort, and how we all manifest everything that happens within a lives. He states once we recognise this, and become conscious of our thoughts, we can apply the law of least effort, to bring us everything we desire.

I'm sure the sceptic in you is saying yeah right, well check this for a story. I have been living the life of a freelance marketing consultant for while now, I have worked with some amazing people, but as you know the freelance world can be a bit sparadic. Because of this I thought it may be good to get a part-time marketing position for 2-3 days a week to tide me over. Within 24 hours of breathing life into this thought, I check Gumtree and see what in essence appears to be the perfect job post. So perfect that I dont think I could have wrote a more fitting job description myself.

'A marketing assistant / exec assistant to grow our business and consumer brands, help radically raise our profile, and change the world a little bit.' http://www.inner-revolution.com/

I haven't got the position yet, but if this doesn't demonstrate the law of least effort I dont know what does. So in closing the more aware we become of the power within I thought, the more successful as people we are.

Wunderman Network - 20 Principles of digital markerting

I was down at the Wunderman offices on Monday, to have a chat with one of my industry mentors. Word of advice if you meet someone along your life journey that you really respect, first tell them and then try and arrange regular meetings. Who better to talk to than a person that is in a position you would like to aspire to.

Anyway whilst waiting in reception I noticed an interesting book entitled 'How to think digital', within the book it states the 21 principles of digital marketing, I left out the last one because it was a shameless plug. These lists always interest me, they wont always be revolutionary, but they attempt to give clarity to a lot of information, which cant be a bad thing. see below.

1. Talk to people at the right time: the moment of truth.
2. The most powerful medium is word of mouth.
3. Marketing is about getting people to do things.
4. Watch what happens after the click.
5. Keeping people waiting is a sin.
6. You're a dataphobe. Get over it
7. Don't wait for the dust to settle.
8. A relationship can last a lifetime.
9. Find the perfect partner.
10. Use the channel of we.
11. Experience is what matters.
12. Handle privacy issues with care.
13. Digital media will keep evolving.
14. Work on predicting the future.
15. Develop a closer relationship with truth.
16. The consumer is i control relationship.
17. Leverage the power of now.
18. Boring isn't boring at the moment of truth.
19. Localization isn't just translation.
20. Just because its digital doesn't mean its better.
21. All warfare is based on deception

Iain Tate: On Becoming a Creative

Iain Tate founder of Poke, talks about what it takes to become a creative. Landing a job at a creative company itself requires some out-of-box thinking, but there’s no need to make things too complicated for yourself either. Once you’ve identified your skills and the type of direction you’d like to head in, coming up with a thoughtful marketing plan for yourself says a lot to potential employers about the type of imagination that you’d bring to their firm.

Iain Tait offers 7 things to consider when seeking the next step in your career:

• Get yourself a portfolio
• Spend a bit of time making your portfolio nice / neat / test it / proof it
• Be clear and upfront about your role in projects you’ve worked on
• Have an opinion on aesthetics / design / interaction / type / sound design / whatever…
• Brand yourself
• Do some light detective work
• Put your plan into action

Full article here

Interview with Director of MTV, Dave McElwaine

PSFK tracked down one of the big boys from MTV to find out where he gathers inspiration for one of the worlds most recognized brands. Here's what he had to say

1. So what are you up to right now?

Designing mobile phone panels for MTV x Sony Ericsson ‘100 Panels’ Project. Designs to be exhibited at a creative summit in Tokyo this fall.

2. Tell me about this or the last creative project you were personally proud of – big or small.

MTV’s Summer Sizzle ‘06 Campaign. A series of live action spots showing massive popsicles, choc ices and ice cream cones melting on the beaches of California to the astonishment of the locals.

3. What did you draw upon to inspire you for this project – (could be anything).

Claus Oldenburg’s oversized sculptures and drawings of everyday objects.

4. Why did you use these inspirations? What human emotions do they play upon that you felt necessary for this project?

Disbelief.

5. In your day-to-day work – how often do you feel inspired? Is it important to be inspired?

It’s important to want to get out of bed.

6. How do you kick start your off-days: How do you find inspiration?

I tend to write off an off-day. I find inspiration from searching - mental archives, my reference library, picture search engines and just wandering.

Thank You

brands as connection tools

Shared Egg is an interesting project that attempts to visualise the connection points between friends. It maps the common areas that bring people together using a combination of interests and brands. It illustrates that brands can be the connective tissue between people; people share a love of brands and an have affinity for them.

Here's an isolated look at the Nike relationships within the map....



It raises some interesting questions..

1. How do brands connect to bigger themes, interests, ideas and emotions?

2. How are brands leveraging those connections?

3. How do brands enhance those connections?

4. How do brands bring communities together?

While many have questioned the role of brands in social networks and communities, Shared Egg illustrates that people can be connected and linked by brands. It still remains to be seen how brands best leverage this opportunity to activate and build out these connections and these communities.

Why trends and inpsiration matters

Ed Cotton (Influx Insights / BSSP) explains why trends and inspiration matter. Approaching the whole idea of his talk from a creative perspective, Ed describes how account planners or other individuals responsible for briefing creative people can package their message up in a way to get them to pay attention.

Success Strategy for Creative Projects

This picture has no relevance to the post I just like it, anyway I just came across an interesting post from the good people at lifedev , its about the approaches to starting a creative project, check it out.

The Soak Cycle

When it comes time to washing dishes you take the grimy dish and put it in water to let it soak. Time and water+soap do the hard work. With time the water and soap break down the grease and grime. Similarly letting your project soak will allow your brain to work on the project even while you’re doing other tasks.

Soaking is when a project is thought about but not actively worked on. The project is reviewed at specific intervals. This gives your natural creative instincts time to work on it.

Think

The human brain is a powerful tool. Giving it time to work on a project will lead to a more creative, better solution. Schedule times to think about your project. Depending on the scope or length of the project you may schedule 5 minutes a day for a week thinking about it or an hour every two weeks for 3 months (or anything in between).

When you schedule thinking time, be sure to give yourself enough time to think. Write down notes of your conclusions so you can refer to it in the future. Try to take different approaches each time you begin a thinking session. Many times you’ll get that “Aha moment” (a good idea) when you least expect it, so don’t worry if you feel blocked. People report inspiration frequently in the shower. Giving yourself time to think will give you more shower days to let your brain think about it.

Layer

During your thinking time find ways to break down the project into small parts. Do a few little steps for the project to give you a better understand of what it entails. Do a five minute task. Do any tasks that take just a few minutes to delegate. They should be delegated as soon as possible so the receiver can plan accordingly and it’s not an emergency at the last second. This process is called layering where you “layer” your successes. It allows you to know you are on the right track and gives you tangible results.

Discuss

Put layering and thinking together by scheduling time to talk to people. Talk to thoughtful people about the project, even if they don’t have expertise about it. Just talking about the project will allow your brain to crystallize your thoughts. In addition, others may provide a new perspective on the project you are tackling and give you a new wave of ideas.
Rinse…Repeat

Enlist others to look at your project as you’re working on it. This gives you an outsider’s view. Get a coworker or friend that you can bounce your work off of. Try to get someone whose ideas you respect but who thinks a little different than you. Show them your progress so they can monitor if you’re fulfilling your mission.

You don’t have to listen to them. Just listen to why they are saying it. They may say you should make an element red. They don’t necessarily mean it has to be red- but it has to contrast from the background. Again you see how outside ideas can trigger new thinking and ideas.

Full article here

Unwind the mind

It has been a very hectic week, feels like there is so much to do and so little time to do it. In order to be truly productive, you have to have a clear mind. Clarity comes when you give your mind a chance to rest.

A over worked mind, is one of the biggest obstacles to productivity, I have kindly put down some ways to get mental breaks. This is kinda like my therapy, compiling this list will actually help me to practice what I am preaching.

Get More Sleep!

Not only does sleep recharge your body and at the very least keep you healthy, it also gives your mind a chance to rest. Literally. If your mind hasn’t been recharged when the day has started, you’re already 2 steps behind.

If you’re finding yourself getting a little sleepy in the afternoons, take a 15-30 minute power nap. Studies have shown that 20 minutes in the afternoon provide more rest than 20 minutes in the morning.

Music

Although some find music a hinderence when their working, personally I work best with the right music in the background. For me, the best music to work to is jazz. Wordless music seems to work best, but everyone has their preference. What’s important is that it adds a little something in the background, but shouldn’t be something that you’ll focus on too much. It’s just kind of there.

Switch’ It Up

One of the best ways to give your mind a break is to switch up your tasks. I can type on something for 30 minutes, get up and do a load of dishes, and come right back feeling quite refreshed. Not to mention that I’ll probably still be working on what I’m typing subconsciously, while I do the dishes. This way my productivity doesn’t take a hit, and I’m still finishing those “tasks”.

Switching it up may mean switching locations too. Work at a coffee shop, do something outside, it doesn’t matter.

Variety is the spice of life, don't forget.

Do Something Fun!

It’ll actually increase your productivity because you’ll be more refreshed later. Taking breaks is just as (if not more) important than the work.

“Breaks” can take many forms, and the only mandatory thing is that you enjoy it. If you have a job behind a desk, give your legs a stretch by doing something active. If you’re in the manual labour biz, go and get a massage. The important thing is to just do what feels good (within the legal realm of course).

Does success validate your opinion?

'Does success validate your opinion' that's my thought of the day. I like to blog as do a lot of people, and in my blog I present my opinion, as again a lot of people do.

Currently I am a relatively unknown blogger, like many other Joe bloggs, so I have been thinking at what point does my opinion become validated. Is success the proof that your opinion is correct, if so and 20,000 people read my blog daily, does that mean my opinion is now more valid than it was when 5 people read it.

Or if I become successful for a reason not related to my blog and start blogging, is my opinion automatically validated because I am a success in my own right, so must hold a valid opinion.

In closing please answer the question DOES SUCCESS VALIDATE YOUR OPINION?

Ideas and Inspiration From Social Media

Most people think that social media sites are only useful for finding what the latest news is. While that is one of the main functions of these sites, many times a pretty creative thought or article lands on the homepage.

Social media communities are built around information that inspires. People don’t want to talk, argue, or debate about a boring topic. They won’t vote for something that’s uninteresting or dumb. A community doesn’t exist around content that isn’t inspiring.

The key difference between social media sites and search engines is that humans are making the recommendations. This is why using social media as a “filter” for news and inspiration is a fantastic idea.

Sometimes Google isn’t the best place to find creative solutions or ideas. Sometimes the best place to search is through the archives of sites like Delicious or Reddit or Friendfeed. These sites have information that has been thoughtfully submitted on interesting web sites or topics. The difference between a search engine and social news or bookmarking site is that people filter the results.

There’s no shortage of creativity to be found at social news and bookmarking sites, they’ll often give great results for finding something very specific. A general rule of thumb is this: If people take the time to bookmark, submit or vote on a story, it’s more than likely to be a better resource.

Open Source Creativity

Creativity is something that’s not easily contained. In fact, it’s contagious. When creative people start putting their heads together, some amazing things happen. It’s a rare occasion when an incredible idea is solely created by one person.

I know, I know it can be hard to let go of our ideas. There’s that little creativity myth that says that keeping our ideas to ourself is much better than sharing them. After all, what if someone steals them, I think this is kinda old school thinking, today its all about collaboration.

Big idea man Seth Godin opened my eyes as to why “giving away” ideas is a great thing. Seth made a beautiful point. 99% of the time the problem isn’t someone stealing your idea, it’s you not actually doing it. So what better way to put an idea into motion than having more people help?

There are many ideas that I’ve had that never would have come close to completing without the help of others. Sharing ideas is critical.

Its important to start changing the way you think about your ideas if you’re going to start letting other people work on them. Pretty soon you’ll have people questioning every aspect of your idea. This is a necessary and healthy aspect of collaboration. If you’re really wanting to let other people (more than one, at least) start working on your ideas, you’ll have to be able to do three things.

1. Realise you can’t do everything on your own - There’s a tendency as idea owners to want to control and do everything. People don’t want to just add input, they want to work on the idea too! Remember, these people have the same goal as you: they want the idea to get better and better. Give up some responsibility. You’ll find happier collaborators and more time for yourself to work on other ideas.

2. Allow for the free exchange of ideas - Now that the idea is open to other people’s interpretation, there are obviously going to be new and different ideas spinning off of it. Some ideas may be so revolutionary and different that they completely change the scope of the original project. That’s totally normal. Remember: The idea is now bigger than just you. You have to be willing to be accept that someone else may have an even better idea than yours.

3. Trust other people - Allowing other people to work on your idea ultimately requires more trust. By letting other people work on the idea, improve the idea and even rip the idea to shreds takes trust. Lots of it. You’ll have to accept that these people working on your idea want the idea to succeed too.

Beyond the Thinking Mind

The human condition: Lost in thought.

Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the conflicts of their own thoughts. They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalised sense of self that is conditioned by the past.

In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought. It is the very essence of who you are. We may call it presence, awareness, the unconditioned consciousness. In the ancient teachings, it is the Christ within, or your Buddha nature.

Finding that dimension frees you and the world from the suffering you inflict on yourself and others when the mind-made "little me" is all you know and runs your life. Love, joy, creative expansion, and lasting inner peace cannot come into your life except through that unconditioned dimension of consciousness.

If you can recognise, even occasionally, the thoughts that go through your mind as just thoughts, if you can witness your own mental-emotional reactive patterns as they happen, then that dimension is already emerging in you as the awareness in which thoughts and emotions happen - the timeless inner space in which the content of your life unfolds.

The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw your attention in completely.
Here is a new spiritual practice for you: dont take your thoughts too seriously.

How easy is it for people to become trapped in their conceptual prisons. The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for the truth. It say: this is how it is. You have to be larger than thought to realise that however you interpret "your life" or someone else's life or behaviour, however you judge any situation, it is no more than a bundle of thoughts. But reality in one unified whole, in which all things are interwoven, where nothing exists in and by itself.

The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but it is also very limiting when it takes over your life completely, when you don't realise that it is only a small aspect of the consciousness that you are.

Wisdom is not a product of thought. The deep knowing that is wisdom arises through the simple act of giving someone or something your full attention. Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness itself. It dissolves the barriers created by conceptual thought, and with this comes the recognition that nothing exists in and by itself. It joins the perceiver and the perceived in a unifying field of awareness.

Whenever you are immersed in compulsive thinking, you are avoiding what is. You don't want to be where you are. Here, Now.

Dogmas - religious, political, scientific - arise out of the erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or the truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of "I Know."

Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas. It is true that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness, however , unless the basic delusion of it is seen for what it is, will be replaced by others.

Unless we start to act Beyond the Thinking Mind.

The Paradox of Creativity

Always one to try and improve my creative process I found this article very helpful. Merlin Mann over at 43 Folders has done an interesting analysis of how creativity works. The theory is that creative work gets done best in a seemingly paradoxical cycle of laser focused activity, and lazy idea gathering, idling and re-charging. In essence, creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.

Mann breaks it down:

Most all makers with longevity talk about a process that involves regular, scheduled work periods that allow generous time for warmups and getting into what Csikszentmihalyi himself has called, “Flow.” For as long as he or she can stay in that Flow state, a good artist is capable of synthesizing unbelievably disparate material and ideas in a way that’s often satisfying and productive. For those who cannot, it means another morning of video games, Facebook, and binge eating.

43 Folders: “Attention & Ambiguity: The Non-Paradox of Creative Work”

Solving Problems

One of the things that everyone, everywhere has to do on a regular basis is solve problems. I thought it would be worth jotting down a few of the different ways you can go about solving problems from what I have learnt from my agency days (but I think that this applies to anyone in business - creative or otherwise).

So the first part of solving any problem is to question. The time honoured Who? What? Why? When? How? Is a great place to start. In advertising this could be are we talking to the right people? What are we trying to achieve? Why do we want to do this? When do we want to do this? How are we going to achieve it?

Each one of these questions can trigger a whole load of new questions that help to understand what it is your trying to achieve and the best way to achieve it.

Which takes us nicely on to arguably the most important part of solving any problem, working out what the problem or objective actually is. Often the problem you’re given isn’t the real problem.

The more specific the problem the better. It’s much easier to work out the answer to a problem when it’s absolutely clear in your mind. So rather than trying to solve “increase brand affinity by 10%” how about “help people to fall in love with the brand again”?

It’s often easier to solve a problem if you can break it down into more manageable chunks. For example, Sainsbury’s famously reframed their problem from “add £4 billion of sales annually” to a far more comprehensable “Increase the average basket size by £3.32″.

Now you know what your problem is you need to read as much as you can on the subject. James Webb Young, one of the greatest advertising men of all time, had a specific technique for generating ideas was:

1. Gather the raw materials - the immediate problem & your general knowledge
2. Work these over in your mind (To this I’d add: Write your first thoughts down, no matter how bad they might be. Keep on writing more stuff. Give it time. Write more stuff down.)
3. Do something else/sleep on it
4. Have the idea
5. Shape the idea to make it useful and practical.

He also believed that “ideas are new combinations”. So when trying to create that little bit of inspiration try combining two unexpected elements e.g. big but personal (HSBC The World’s Local Bank) or small but tough (VW Polo).

Another technique is to think of great ideas in other sectors and categories and apply them to your problem. So if there’s an idea that always works in fashion retailing you might want to think about whether it’ll work in publishing.

Once you’ve got your solution, remember to keep the explanation as simple as possible so that anyone can understand it and pass it on.