WTF are creative superpowers and how do you get them?
We’re Alex and Emily, a creative team who’s done the hire, the placement, the freelance and the unmotivated… all probably in the wrong order, but we’re rolling with it, putting ourselves back into the game by starting again, learning what we want and as much as we can from the industry. We’re currently back on placement at Publicis, making some cool stuff, trying to find the right agency we want to work for. When helloyoucreatives asked us to write a lil’ summin’ on the creative superpowers talk, we lapped up the opportunity, with the hope it’d help keep us motivated, plus get a few ideas for the briefs & projects we’re currently working on.
To be totally honest we approached this talk with sceptical hope, the same kind you have when somebody recommends a film by saying 'trust me it’s sick, you’ll love it'. You want to love it, but something in the back of your mind says it’ll probably be a bit crap, and make you feel bad at the end of it.
So while Alex swapped our free drink tokens for a few bevs we asked ourselves whether we were going to come out of this feeling like mere mortals having not achieved much at all. Or whether we’d walk out with a renewed sense of purpose and creative superpowers of our own?
We still weren’t sure but as Daniele (one of the writers of Creative Superpowers) started his introduction; I think we both started to feel glad we decided to ignore the inner sceptic. He talked about entering the age of creativity, where the rise of new tech like Artificial intelligence and Crowdsourcing will, through something called ‘neuroplasticity’ (our new word of the week), change the way we think and solve problems forever.
To do this he says we need some new skills or in other words, what we all came to hear about, some creative superpowers: Hacker, Maker, Teacher and Thief. There’s loads we wanted to write about, they gave us a crap tonne of great advice and dropped some quotes that could put your best pinterest board to shame. You might say enough to a fill a book, so instead we’ll share a few things things from the talk that affected us most.
Some of the most mind-blowiest stuff came from Laura Jordan Bambach Creative partner at Mr.President, founder of the SheSays awards, a former D&AD president and quite frankly a straight-up ‘don’. In her words no matter how many decks, docs, and client presentations we do, “we aren’t makers,” all that bollocks takes away the craft, experimentation and the failures that make “Happy Accidents” the little sparks of genius where the real great stuff lives.
Even when Bacardi asked her to create content for a massive crazy A-list party, right in the Bermuda Triangle! (Sounds like some James Bond meets the Hangover typea thing), that would surely connect with Bacardi's audience right? Well i guess not because instead of just filming an influencer party “normal guys aren’t really cool enough to go to” she decided to go against the brief, gather a bit of cash money and run with the thought ‘what if we could break into the Bermuda Triangle?’ What they came up with instead was something that not only was incredibly cool but pretty damn inspiring, in a ‘millennial’ Robin Hood kind of way. Basically the next time a planner gives you a brief just burn it right then and there, JK but do really think about what isn’t on that piece of paper.
Link to the trailer worth a watch–https://vimeo.com/13166886
We learnt how hacking doesn't necessarily mean just tapping into a computer and fraping your mates facebook, but instead is a way to channel your brain into overcoming systems, and having the desire to solve difficult problems and find unique creative solutions.
Which makes the thief section a bit of an odd one because if you did all that to find a great creative solution and somebody else presented your idea, you’d probably want to punch them in the throat. But if you really think about it, everything's a remix; a great quote we took from Mark Earls was: “Originality is for people with short memories”. Some of the best solutions to real world problems come from stealing somebody else's approach and applying it to your own. Apparently David Bowie was at it too, famously cutting up other songs and rearranging them for inspo, so next time your conscious starts creeping up on you, just think, “what would Bowie do?”
The main bulk of what we took from Teacher is that you’re “illiterate” if you stop learning and if you’re stuck in a rut, you need to accept that in order to progress you need to LEARN, UNLEARN and RELEARN some things. Like, imagine nowadays tackling a brief straight on without the help from google or your account planner. You’d have to live through the product yourself… and that to us was damn right insightful.
We asked them what advice would they give to broke creatives trying to make it, they told us to say yes to everything and no matter what they may be, to think about your talents (for me he suggested charging for caricatures) and just start making stuff because that’s where opportunity comes from.
All in all they’ve somehow managed to combine a boatload of different experiences into a fresh way of looking at the things we all do everyday, after this I'll be able to say confidently my fav superpower is still teleportation. But what these guys proposed is definitely a close second.
Thanks to the guys at Creative Social & Dan at HYC for the tickets.
(P.S If anybody wants a caricature send us a cheeky email at [email protected] I charge by the hour)
Go support the Creative Superpowers project here -
https://unbound.com/books/creative-super-powers
