Some people just aren't creative

There are dozens and dozens of books published every year where some guru tries to promote ways that the average business person can delve into creative work with more success. They offer methods of looking at a creative campaign from off-center angles and allowing yourself the ability to feed the creative voice through a step-by-step process of understanding. I’ve read many of them, but will not mention the titles here for fear of slandering them. You see, I think most of them are frauds.

The primary problem I have with them is that when one tries to provide a set methodology and path to be creative, you’re still making it into something that can be rationalized and diagramed… something that I believe is detrimental to a creative process. Creativity is in part chaotic, but always individualized. No two creative processes will ever look exactly alike. It is often emotional and even a little bit irrational in nature. Yet these books and seminars put out a call that every left brained point-to-point business person feel they can rally behind, and every artist shudders to hear… that everyone can be creative.

It is my experience that this is simply not true. But this shouldn’t be frowned upon. It’s OK to have shortcomings. From an outside perspective, it should make as much sense for business manager to be helping pick design styles as it would for a photographer to be crunching numbers. Sure, there are those that can reach out across those lines, but for the best possible outcome, each person should be aware of their specific skill set and allow those who are better suited for other functions to do that. The best purpose for these “How to be creative guides” in my opinion is to simply open bridges of dialogue. As a creative personality, I spent years honing my ability to explain and rationalize my efforts to those who wouldn’t normally get there themselves, and help each campaign gain a “business sense” of sorts. Those guides did help some with that, and they can also bridge the gap in the opposite direction in giving a non-creative language to “get it”. But I don’t think it’s wise to believe that being able to talk about something is quite the same as finding success in doing it.

Say it with me now. “Some people are not creative.”

In the age where specialization in the marketplace is giving way to cross-training, it’s important to remember that some people are just better at some jobs than others, and there is nothing wrong with that. Truly successful campaigns happen where the chaos of creative and the order of business can meet. It involves trust and communication on both ends and a healthy individual sense of self-knowledge. It involves insightful management of a project where one knows where to draw lines, and where it is called for, to simply trust the artist.

It’s not a philosophy that will sell many books, but it is one that will really benefit your marketing.