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Jason Keath: More Bad Ideas
15 Plays8 days ago
In this episode, Eric talks with Jason Keath—founder of Social Fresh, longtime creative strategist, and author of The Case for More Bad Ideas. The conversation explores why creativity is misunderstood, why most organizations limit their own creative potential, and why truly inventive work comes from consistent practice rather than inspiration.
Jason explains how he approaches idea generation, why “bad ideas” matter, and what people get wrong about brainstorming. Eric and Jason also dig into discipline vs. inspiration, the value of keeping an organized idea archive, how constraints unlock better work, and how AI fits into the creative process.
They cover:
- The counterintuitive nature of creativity
- Why variety, environment, and “brushing up against life” matter
- How Jason uses lists, patterns, and saved ideas
- Why most corporate brainstorms underperform
- How to bring more creative permission into your team
- The difference between creative insight and creative execution
- How AI can help and why it falls short without human direction
Whether you’re a marketer, writer, strategist, or just someone trying to think more creatively, this conversation gives you a grounded, practical way to strengthen your creative practice.
Episode Links
- Jason Keath: https://jasonkeath.com
- Social Fresh: https://socialfresh.com
- More Bad Ideas newsletter: https://www.morebadideas.com
- The Case for More Bad Ideas (Jason’s book): https://amzn.to/3XFah82
- Jason’s article “How To Be More Creative”: https://jasonkeath.com/more-creative/
- Seinfeld on the Pop-Tart joke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWxXyCfW5s
For more episodes: https://unfoldingthought.com
Questions or guest ideas: eric@inboundandagile.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Welcome
00:00:02
Speaker
Jason, thank you for joining me. As I was just saying before we hit record, it has been a very long time since we had any interaction, but we did, you know, run into each other in person, I guess I might say. So since it has been a long time, I'll i'll start with first, where does today's recording find you?
Jason's New York Inspiration
00:00:24
Speaker
Yeah, so i'm I'm usually always in New York City or right outside New York City or or some it's my favorite place to be. It's my favorite state of mind. And today that's where I'm where i'm working.
00:00:35
Speaker
Having said that, it's been a bit since we had much interaction or conversation or whatever you want to call it. Can you tell me a bit about yourself?
Jason's Journey: Art to Agency
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, I come from, I'm an art student that went into the agency space, right? So I was designer, I was a creative lead, and then I started my own company, Social Fresh, back in 2008.
00:00:59
Speaker
um Social Fresh is a marketing conference and an agency, and we've been doing that work ever since. ah But I think in terms of what do I do each day, I'm typically either a strategist or I'm the kind of idea person creative in the room. And I think that overlaps quite a bit.
00:01:17
Speaker
um But we work for clients that do a lot of digital marketing, strategy research, paid media. um We run a conference for which is the first original social media conference, um which I believe is where we met first, if not, if Twitter doesn't count. and um I write about creativity and I write about marketing. And those are where I spend most of my days thinking.
Walkable Cities and Innovation
00:01:40
Speaker
When I asked you about your location, you talked about New York. And I think I recall that in your book, which was published this year, if I recall correctly, you say something about generally wanting to be or being attracted to a very walkable city.
00:01:59
Speaker
And I can't remember if you talk about New York in that way, but is that some of your attraction? to new york i mean it's definitely one of the my favorite things about new york city it's probably the most walkable city um in the states um in the book i do mention florence or something in italy or spain i mean every town in italy is very well walkable for the most part but florence is a great example because you can walk across the whole city of florence in like 30 minutes to most places maybe 40 45 if you stretch it um
00:02:34
Speaker
But yeah, i i the first time I landed in New York, it felt like home to me, even though I still hadn't learned how to use subway and accidentally landed in Queens somehow. um But it's just, you know, there's an energy to it.
00:02:48
Speaker
Beyond that, there's an energy to it and there's an attitude and... I think, uh, you know people are more likely to just be solving or building, or being creative in some way in New York city than a lot of places. And I, I love, I love that. And I thrive on that vibe.
00:03:05
Speaker
You talking about some of your attraction to New York city, it feels to me like this relates to some of the things that you talk about in
Diversity and Creativity
00:03:15
Speaker
your book. And we might back up and, and describe the book a bit at some point, but I forget where I came upon this conjecture, I guess, but I recall reading a book and someone was making the argument that one of the reasons that you see more innovation and creativity in New York City proper, I guess I might say, than you do across the river in New Jersey, something like that, is because you have so many people packed into so it's such a small space that
00:03:49
Speaker
different kinds of people are running into one another. And the differences, you know, so two people with different specialties or sets of experience or whatever are what create novel ideas. And alongside this, they gave the example of Watson and Crick and kind of the race for the discovery of DNA more or less. And basically what they said was,
00:04:18
Speaker
At the time, you had a lot of solo researchers, more or less, that were running their own labs and they had their own students that were specialized in their sort of niche.
00:04:31
Speaker
And even if they were talking to their students or other people, it was all people with similar backgrounds. Whereas Watson and Crick had slightly different specialties. i forget exactly what they were, but I think one of them was ah maybe a zoologist and the other one was a molecular biologist or something of that nature.
00:04:50
Speaker
And so they had so slightly different knowledge sets and then they would go and walk through a park or take lunch together. And it was the different perspectives that they had on research that this person was saying helps them find novel approaches to discovering this structure of DNA. And I realize this is sadly ah a much longer story than it probably needed to be. But as you're talking about New York City, and I forget the terminology that you use, but you
00:05:25
Speaker
creativity or some vibrancy or whatever else, you remind me a bit of reading that that argument. Yeah, I mean, you want variety for ideas to be new or novel.
00:05:41
Speaker
um And if you are working with people or are surrounded by people that all think the same way or are risk averse, um then that's harder to do. you To get a divergent perspective um to break patterns, you you need ah you need a larger variety of things that you're interacting with. And cities provide that.
00:06:01
Speaker
um I think New York is also interesting because it's there's there's there's a lot of arts centered in New York City, and whether it's theater or or even the the ad agency space, you know, Mad Men, Madison Avenue, um music industry. There's a thriving art market, art world in new York City with so many galleries and museums. But it ah It is also the variety of the people that are coming to a city or coming to a location or coming to an office or or a workplace.
00:06:31
Speaker
um If they are or even, you know, if you drill down even more, if you're just if you're having a meeting, if you're having a brainstorm meeting or some type of creative project and you have six people in the room.
00:06:41
Speaker
um Studies show, the data shows, that if three of those people are not normally working together on the same team, that's kind of the optimal break makeup of of a creative project or or brainstorm team.
00:06:55
Speaker
um If all six people are from the same team that work with each other every day, there's less variety of thought, there's less chance of something new or novel happening in that meeting. So I think it's, you know, there's there's also a similar study on Broadway that the Broadway plays that have made the most money that ah arguably are the most kind of creative and interesting um are the ones that have like two people that have worked together before, but maybe two other key players that are new and not have not worked with that team before. yeah. You see this pattern repeated everywhere.
00:07:26
Speaker
And I think those things are more like, you know, what you're describing happens all the time, but I think it's more likely to happen in places where you have a diversity of talent and thinking and perspectives. I forget how much you talk about this in your book, but you at least reference that a lot of brainstorming sessions or something like that in companies tend to quote unquote fail, whatever failure means exactly. You know, we don't get to our goals or we don't get really creative thinking or something of that nature. And so you just said, you know, there is sort of an optimal mix of bringing in people from different teams or the outside or whatever.
Creativity Challenges in Companies
00:08:08
Speaker
So,
00:08:10
Speaker
how this may be too specific of a question, so please take it more broadly if you feel like it's helpful, but do you think that when it comes to innovation or creative thinking or brainstorming in a lot of companies that very often it tends to quote unquote fail because it's just the creative team that gets together or it's just, you know, an engineering team and not people from diverse backgrounds, so to speak?
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, not necessarily. I mean, I think there's certain realities in a lot of corporate America office jobs that you you can't really, the the ideal creative team and brainstorm meeting is an ideal. You don't have to reach it every time. Like you don't have to go through three hours of a creative process to come up with the title of a blog post, right? Like not every project deserves a ton of work.
00:09:00
Speaker
Um, so it depends on the goal depends on the size of the creative challenge. Um, giving creative teams creative control is not a bad thing inherently, but I think it's good to know these things and know like, you know, our, our ideas lately have not been great. What can we do to spice things up? What can we do to break patterns? Um,
00:09:21
Speaker
Um, and, you know, on a bigger project, I think it does make sense to bring in someone from accounting or legal or, or PR or whatever, whatever it is, someone from a different team or outside help. I mean, i run an agency. It's essentially one of the, I think, core capabilities of an agency to come in and be that outside voice, that new perspective.
00:09:40
Speaker
Um, so there's a lot of ways to do these things. I will say, i think most of, you know to your larger question, why are companies bad at creativity on a consistent basis, which I would agree. um There's two things. Number one, you don't, not not everything a company needs to do, ah not everything a company does needs to be creative. Right.
00:10:04
Speaker
um But I do think generally what is happening is most companies don't give permission or um time or resources or kind of...
00:10:16
Speaker
the kind of recommendation or belief in risk-taking on many levels. And they see risk-taking in creative... They see it as risk, where whereas risk-taking is kind of requirement for a creative process.
00:10:31
Speaker
So, you know, companies get comfortable. They like patterns. They like repeatable process. And, you know, that is kind of the antithesis to creative outputs. So I think you have to pick your pick your fights a little bit. You have to decide...
00:10:46
Speaker
if If our company is not standing out compared to our competitors, where can we really focus to change that? And who needs the permission and the resources to be able to do that consistently? And that comes from leadership.
00:10:59
Speaker
And, you know, that's the, you know, giving people permission to spend more time on very specific kind of creative challenges is is the key.
The Case for More Bad Ideas
00:11:08
Speaker
Okay, let me back up a little bit real quick because there are a number of things that I want to ask you about. But having read your book, I...
00:11:20
Speaker
would love in length or or in brief if you would tell me how you describe your book so the book is the case for more bad ideas um it is the counter into the counterintuitive guide to creativity i wrote the book because i've been a creative like my whole career and my whole life and i've had permission to be creative and i did it took me a while to figure out that most people don't um But my upbringing, my parents, my schooling, my career path has all allowed me more, more permission to be creative in life.
00:11:54
Speaker
And, you know, as you learn creative skills, as you define your own creative kind of habits and process, I think you stumble upon the fact that it's, it is a very counterintuitive um place to spend your, your thinking hours.
00:12:08
Speaker
And I think, The reason I wrote the book is i wanted to get permission for more people to be able to make those investments and take those risks because creativity is kind of the point. It's it's kind of why, you know, it's the fun part of the job, right? And everybody kind of is scared of creativity. There's even studies that say when you are the creative person in the room or you say something a little divergent that it puts people on their heels a little bit um because there is that risk of averseness that we all have, um especially in office culture.
00:12:41
Speaker
Even if you can't, even if you don't acknowledge it, it's like a subconscious thing sometimes. um So I think, you know, teaching people that anyone can be more creative, I think is ah is a very worthwhile thing to put your effort into. So that's that's the purpose of the book is just giving people more permission to believe that creativity is a skill. It can be learned. It can be practiced.
00:13:03
Speaker
Um, and it's not a gift and it's not something that should be a worrying point for a shoe in your career or your, or your life in general. It's, it's the fun part of the job.
00:13:14
Speaker
When you wrote this book, I think you say in here that it took you quite a few years to pull everything together. You know, were you trying to encapsulate, you know, years of learning? Were you trying to make an argument for, you like you say, the case for more bad ideas? And were you trying to make a case for something? Or what what was the, what was the goal of the book?
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, my my goal was simply to give that freedom to other people. um i think, When I work with people, i can see the things that they're missing in their creative process, or I can see them holding themselves back a little bit. You know, you if you're training someone for your agency, if you're working with a client, if you're, um we work, we train speakers up to put on stage at Social Fresh Conference.
00:14:13
Speaker
Like everyone has this creative potential. a lot of people lack the confidence or the time or the belief that they can achieve a certain level of success or creativity. um And I see a lot of bad advice out there.
00:14:28
Speaker
i So, yeah, I am making the case. I'm making the case for kind of second guessing your assumptions about your own creative abilities um and giving you very specific interventions. The whole book is just a list of interventions. It's more of a toolbox than it is it's like ah a specific one, two, three step recipe.
00:14:46
Speaker
um Each person will get something different out of it. I think they'll get like two or three things they can, that'll fit their creative process or the way they work. um And I think, you know, allow people to really change the way they think about ideas and solving create problems.
00:15:03
Speaker
yeah When I read the title, you know, the case for more bad ideas and then going through the book, think Forgive me if you state this explicitly, and I'm just remembering it as sort of my interpretation, but I thought of the quote, or I forget where it comes from. Maybe it's not an exact quote, but the idea that the only way out is through.
00:15:29
Speaker
And in the sense that, you know, Yeah. Again, maybe you state this explicitly and I just forgot, but in the sense that the way to get to better ideas, more creative thinking, some innovation, however we want to phrase it, is that you have to experiment.
00:15:50
Speaker
You have to throw out ideas that may turn out to be bad. But if you're, let's say, afraid to have a bad idea, or if your organization punishes you, then it's kind of difficult to get to the other side where you do end up with innovation or good ideas. Is that a, but did did you state that explicitly and or and am I thinking of it properly? No, I mean the whole, the whole, so one of the core chapters is actually how do you incorporate bad ideas into your creative process? And that, you know, is the book is about that, but it's also more about ideas. It's just a general kind of call to action of ah the counterintuitive nature of creativity.
00:16:32
Speaker
But one of the many reasons bad ideas work in brainstorming um is because they are easier to come up with. They have no downside. Like if I ask you for a bad idea and you come up with a terrible idea, you succeeded, right? So there's, you know, it takes, and that, believe it or not, it takes a little practice to be able to come up with bad ideas. When you ask someone to write down, you know, a list of 25 ideas 10 minutes, They will actually do this weird human nature thing of all right, I want to find the best bad idea, like the perfect bad idea. And that's like kind of the antithesis of what I'm asking you to do.
00:17:06
Speaker
um What you're trying to get people to do is just put down anything that comes to mind and take away that judgment layer of their brain that we all have by default. um And that's hard to, it doesn't take long to kind of learn that.
00:17:18
Speaker
um But I give examples of what bad ideas really are. You know, something can be too expensive. Something can be too dangerous. Something can be too boring. um it can be an idea you think is too obvious that other people will have thought of, which is another bad assumption because we do come up with different ideas quite a bit.
00:17:34
Speaker
um So I think, you know, thinking about that, the you know, writing your way out of a problem or working your way through a problem. um I think the key is that creativity is not passive. It's not waiting for an idea to come to you. I mean, that is incubation that does happen, but it's not a passive activity. It actually requires action.
00:17:57
Speaker
um So my whole POV is, you know, creativity is work. It can be learned. It takes practice, um but it's an active skill. It's not a passive skill.
00:18:09
Speaker
So if you're not actively starting a creative process with, all right, let's let's ah write down 10 bad ideas. Let's um you know actively bring together a constraint questions process for this where we, you know, that there's a lot of examples of things in the book, a lot of interventions that you can use like that, um that start you thinking in different directions and break your own personal patterns.
00:18:34
Speaker
um So it's, you know, it's it's it's work. It takes practice, but it's fun work. And it just requires you to kind of think about things a little differently. And, i you know, it's what not what we typically do each day.
00:18:47
Speaker
You argue in the book that creativity is a learned skill, more
Creativity: Discipline vs. Inspiration
00:18:53
Speaker
or less. Or at least I think that I understood that. And that caused me to think about how I believe that, you know, having worked in marketing for 20 something years, that whether it's marketers or just generally, I think a lot of people view the creative, you know, the artist as being someone who is inspired.
00:19:18
Speaker
And when they're not inspired, they're just sitting around thinking or they're waiting for inspiration to strike. And I think a lot of People that desire to be creative don't have discipline.
00:19:34
Speaker
You know, they don't have a practice that or maybe multiple practices, like a, yeah I forget the word you use, but you said something along the lines of tool set or a toolbox.
00:19:45
Speaker
And so I think we, the the general we society, sort of think of like, if you have a discipline, if you have a practice, a process, that then suddenly that's going to stop you from being creative.
00:20:02
Speaker
And so as I was reading this statement or argument, I was really curious how you think about just someone's natural inclination to be creative versus what we often see as being the polar opposite, which is a lot of discipline.
00:20:21
Speaker
And then where I think, you know, if we want to think of this as being binary, which I don't think we have to, but if you wanted to, it would I think you often find real creativity in the middle between those things because you have to have a discipline. You have to have the skill to be creative, but you have to have some of that discipline in order to actually execute and not just have an idea.
00:20:48
Speaker
So I don't even know if I have a question as much as is you caused me to think this, and I'm curious what you how you interpret that. Yeah, I mean, it's so part of this is like a nature versus nurture question. Are you born creative or not? um I think some people are born with a certain type of artistic skill. um You know, there people that have a kind of in innate ability to sing. I'm a terrible singer. i am not on that end of that.
00:21:16
Speaker
spectrum I am I am you know I'm not a great illustrator and yet I'm a trained artist but illustration is something that some people are born with but you can also learn like if you practice illustration every day you can become a really good illustrator So I think both are true. I think some people have ah a certain type of skill, but even if you have a certain type of, you know you're gifted with some type of artistic ability, if you don't use it, you don't become creative.
00:21:40
Speaker
um Creativity comes from the most creative people in the world are the people that are solving the most creative challenges on a daily basis. It's people that are painters or are singer-songwriters or work in an ad agency or, you know, for whatever reason, it it can be engineers. um it's It's people that have creative challenges that come to them on a regular basis and they actively practice ah that skill set and use it. um So in order to, you know, if you haven't been getting that permission, if you haven't been put in a creative field, you do have to
00:22:18
Speaker
find that way to practice somehow um and that doesn't mean you had to become a painter or a writer but you have to do something that's creative problem solving uh so you know i think um the other part of your question is you know
00:22:35
Speaker
the balance of kind of a natural ability versus process. I mean, I think natural ability, natural natural inclination to be creative is just permission. It's a first step, whereas process um is important, but it's, you know, i define creativity as work. It does take these active...
00:22:56
Speaker
kind of patterns in your life to, to really perfect it. But it's not, it's not a 12 step program. It's not, you know, 10, uh, 10 clear, uh, um, steps along a path that you have to get right. It's just repeated, challenging of assumptions really. Um, and kind of, uh, building up, um, kind of, uh,
00:23:21
Speaker
a curiosity of the world around you. Some of what you were talking about early on and then even just a moment ago, think if I can restate it, it sounds to me like, or summarize maybe, it sounds to me like when you say that creativity is a work, for example, or when you even just talk about being creative, that What's implied maybe is that someone doesn't just have a creative idea or that they're a, you know, out of the box thinker. But it sounds to me like you're saying something actually gets done beyond idea generation. Is that fair generally?
00:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, consistent practice is important working on problems for a long time. The biggest ideas typically come from people who've worked on it for years or decades. The active piece of it is just consistency. Consistent practice is what makes creativity a skill.
00:24:21
Speaker
And that happens in a lot of different ways. But, you know, it's if it's not built into the current system you have, you have to you have to make it happen somehow. If this is not the right way to think about it, please tell me. But what this is, the idea that this is bringing to mind is in any kind of organization, maybe we have an innovation team or maybe we have the wizard of X. You know, that i I don't mean X like the platform.
00:24:50
Speaker
I mean, X, Y, Z or ABC something. And that's the man or woman or the team that comes up with skunk works like ideas.
00:25:03
Speaker
But and so we bring them in to do novel thinking or to come up with ideas, but that In a lot of organizations, I think when we have this person or team, seems to me like one thing that is poorly executed as an organization is having that person tied to the realization of the ideas. It's more like we bring in somebody to have that diverse voice and or that out-of-the-box thinking, but that then the people who are tasked with moving this project forward
00:25:37
Speaker
are the people who are they all think alike they all have a similar background and i'm wondering if in your work with your clients agencies whatever if you encounter this or if you see it similarly where it's like maybe it's not the maybe it's not often the best structure to have one person or one team that is creative they're the out-of-the-box thinkers but they're not involved in realizing that thinking
00:26:11
Speaker
Yeah. So a couple of things there. I mean, I think the you huge benefits to kind of upskilling your whole company on creativity, it creates a happier employee, creates a more fun workplace. It's better culture. Um, it makes them better at their job in many ways, more innovative.
00:26:29
Speaker
Um, but again, not every project needs, needs like a ah specialty creative team to come in to fix it. You I, it's Again, it's ah it's a reason why agencies kind of exist is because agencies can come in, you know, a branding agency comes in and does rebrand, does a new logo, does a, you know, whatever.
00:26:45
Speaker
We will do a social media strategy for a company or a content strategy for a company and we don't have to execute on that. They can run with it for quite a while and do good work.
Specialized vs. General Creative Skills
00:26:54
Speaker
um But then you have the larger problems like um Ford realized they needed to kind of sell a cheaper car and that their whole infrastructure how they build cars only had a certain lower price limit that they could reach.
00:27:09
Speaker
So they changed how they built cars by having a whole separate team from the entire company with a lot of risk ability, a lot of ability to absorb risk, to ignore risk, a lot of ability to be creative and completely separate kind of production process that now they're rolling out to all of their vehicles over what will be a long time.
00:27:28
Speaker
um That is kind of a really big challenge that camp could not have been met by just upskilling people in their current roles and responsibilities. Dr. Fabric-Kerig did a similar thing for trying to create reusable kind of coffee one-shotters um that were safer for the environment. So companies will...
00:27:50
Speaker
increasingly take these kind of risk of creating separate teams that um can solve larger problems. But I think it's okay for, you know, the average brainstorm to be a short meeting. It's okay for, you know, having one person that's really good at being creative in a certain sector of a company and coming in and and being kind of that hotshot person that can change.
00:28:13
Speaker
in a brief time period help someone it's okay for agencies to come in and do that work it's okay for an innovation team to come in and do that work and not have to complete projects just depends on how big the challenge is how big the problem is what the impact of that solution is going to be um and scaling up or down accordingly So I think the the bigger deal is um is really identifying that creativity is a probability game. And sometimes you need a small creative solution and you don't need a huge kind of scale to reach that solution.
00:28:46
Speaker
And sometimes you just have a really huge problem and the the probability scale on that needs to be much bigger and takes a larger commitment or, or more um kind of risky solution of like an external team.
00:28:59
Speaker
Do you get in situations where your work is sometimes largely restricted to helping your clients think more creatively or come up with ideas, but then as a partner for your clients, you aren't then involved in you know taking that idea out into the world. So you're more of consultant, I suppose.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways, we are a strategy consulting agency for most of the work we do. We do execute on paid media. um We're very good at that. So we do the execution for some companies, but there's a lot of companies that bring us in simply for ideas. I mean, we do one of our products is the trends reports. We will come in quarterly and present to sometimes it's just a performance team. Sometimes it's a social organic social media team. Sometimes it's a full marketing department of 50 people.
00:29:53
Speaker
Um, but we'll come in and present kind of what is happening in social, um, on organic social side, on paid social side, ah with creative content. Like what are the trends in content? What are people, what type of content is working from creators, from other brands, from competitors, from aspirational brands?
00:30:11
Speaker
Um, And that's simply just like giving people good ideas of like things that are being tried out there and working and kind of widening their scope of what's possible um for creative content.
00:30:22
Speaker
ah We also do that when we develop a strategy. We also do that when we are even down to like an SEO strategy, which doesn't sound like it could be that creative, but you do have to be creative even more so today with e SEO than you used to.
00:30:37
Speaker
um So sometimes we'll execute, usually on the performance side, like we'll execute paid social, we'll execute SEO, um a paid media in general. ah But a lot of our work is kind of research strategy and giving an existing team kind of permission to go into a new direction.
00:30:56
Speaker
If I think of your agency work as being maybe somewhat similar to Ford having a team that's going to be able to re-engineer the production process or something.
00:31:14
Speaker
then do you get into, yeah well, in that case, I'm assuming that Ford's team can actually change a production line, in an assembly line in one plant or another so that they can test things out. But do you get in situations on the agency side or consulting side for your clients where you're bringing ideas to the table or you're helping them think more creatively and then if for one reason or another, there's pressure on you six months down the line, 12 months down line, because therere the client did not execute upon the ideas.
00:31:56
Speaker
And and i'm I'm not asking you to call out specific clients or anything. I'm just thinking more so when you do a workshop, Or when you're the creative director, perhaps, or the strategist that comes in and you're helping push new thinking or new ideas.
00:32:13
Speaker
But then it's on someone else's plate. It's on the client's plate to actually go and do the work. Do you get in positions where the clients look back and they undervalue that time brainstorming or that thinking that you helped them do because the execution just wasn't there?
00:32:32
Speaker
ah In general, I find people execute pretty well on what we give them. I think every agency has a a little eye on what happens after they leave a client or what happens when a client decides to go into a new direction. I mean, marketing teams have tons of turnover.
00:32:49
Speaker
If we worked with a client two years ago, there's not even a guarantee that one of the people we worked with is still at that company, right? So you know you never know what's going at company. um In general, though, I find our work gets executed on pretty well. ah It's in the numbers typically, like when we do a strategy, when we do trends reporting products, when we come in and help someone reset or um do a huge research report for them, I typically always do benchmarks.
00:33:15
Speaker
And we always follow that up three, six, 12 months later to see, you know, if they're improving categories and ah every single case, the numbers go up, uh, according to our goals. So, you know, it's, you know, I, I think sometimes you can't help that. Sometimes companies just can't do certain things, don't have the resources to, um, you know, be, uh, to hit every goal, but,
00:33:38
Speaker
i I think most marketing people, most creatives um know a good idea when they see one and understand like a good strategy when they see one and will run with it if
Strategy and Execution in Agencies
00:33:48
Speaker
they're capable of. So I don't see that as a typical problem, but I'm I'm very realistic that it happens and you know you can only do what you can do while you're while you're there.
00:33:57
Speaker
I'm also wondering if you have enough experience with creative thinking and creativity being a learned skill or having a process or whatever, if maybe I would see the lack of execution being more likely because you go into one of your clients and you have a process, you know, you have, you're doing a trends report, for example, or you're helping them think more creatively or whatever. And because you have a process, you have a way of training them up or educating them that facilitates the better execution.
00:34:38
Speaker
Whereas maybe in my experience, right, either I lack that structure, or I've just been in places where I see three-hour brainstorming workshop, but then it's business as usual afterwards. And so maybe then I'm just more accustomed to a higher quote-unquote failure rate.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's hard for me to speak to other people's process or experience. i I do think, I mean, i we've been doing this work a long time. I've i've been inside of agencies. we Our team has been inside of the biggest brands in the world on the brand side.
00:35:15
Speaker
um And i think I've seen enough of how not to do it. to Eventually you reach a place where you just know your work really well. Um, so I, I will come into a work with a client. I mean, we've worked with, you know, HubSpot and Robinhood and, uh, credit karma, some like pretty big, big brands, but we also have worked with like two persons team startups.
00:35:38
Speaker
Um, and on both sides of that, I can come in and and commonly see like a lot of red flags of, you know, something that's not going to work. And I will bring those up proactively. Typically I was like, We can do this for you, but I think one of the risks is you don't have an ad person on your team and your current agency is not doing great work because of X, Y, Z. so we would recommend at least addressing those issues or hiring someone that you're going need to execute on this, um or we we don't think you'll be fully able to kind of take advantage of the opportunity we're presenting.
00:36:11
Speaker
So you try to like identify those problems up front when possible. And sometimes you have this conversation before a client hires you specifically because you want to be just transparent about what it's going to take for them to and get the most value out of it.
00:36:27
Speaker
But typically people are hiring you because they're missing something that you can provide and they want to invest in something more, but they don't know. They want to be more confident in the investment decisions they're going to make, whether that's spending on ads, whether that's spending on a social media team, um transitioning to video production, whether that's spending on research. um They just, they bring they're bringing you in as an expert to give them more confidence in that decision. And that's something we feel really confident doing because we've done done it so often over the years.
00:36:58
Speaker
At one point in the book, maybe multiple points, you talk about the value of holding on to your ideas, basically making notes.
Organizational Systems for Ideas
00:37:07
Speaker
You know, you have, whether it's a good idea or bad idea, or just, just an idea you talk about, well, more or less write it down. I don't know if you phrase it that way, but essentially, and,
00:37:18
Speaker
immediately what I thought was, okay, there are people who just generally don't hold onto ideas. They're not note takers, whatever it is. And so they start writing things down. And I think that very often, i mean, I used to be one of these people, very often people will have a huge list and it becomes too difficult to sift through or find something.
00:37:43
Speaker
Now we could talk about being able to search in Evernote or Apple notes or whatever it is, But even with searching, I have to have an idea of i have to have a sense. Let me separate idea and sense here. you have to have a feeling that I once had a an idea about something and then I can search for it.
00:38:04
Speaker
But what happens to a lot of folks is, you get this super long list of ideas and it's just too much to deal with. It's not structured. it's And so it becomes unusable.
00:38:16
Speaker
But then even for people who are note takers or they hold on to things, they often will lack an organization system or something else. And so...
00:38:28
Speaker
When you talked about holding on to ideas or making notes or whatever it was in the book, I was really curious if you have a structure or if you talk to your clients about maybe don't just have a Google spreadsheet or, you know, something in Notion or whatever, maybe have a process or ah an organization system so that those ideas become usable, easier to use later on.
00:38:58
Speaker
I think that process is very specific to everyone. I don't have an exact, uh, process that I recommend everybody do, but essentially like if you're, if you, most creative challenges are repeatable challenges, challenges that you have to overcome on a regular basis, whether it's writing headlines, you write regular blog posts, do you, um, have a annual marketing campaign that, you know, is going to come up every year in the same quarter.
00:39:23
Speaker
um And because of that, just saving that process is very helpful. Like we will do rebranding projects um for clients, sometimes coming into a new logo, coming into a new brand name.
00:39:35
Speaker
um And naming a company is is one of those places where scale is really helpful. Like coming up with thousands of name options is sometimes just what you have to do when you're trying to find the right name that you think is good the research shows the goals in the research show is good but also the very particular opinion of a decision maker of the client has to be mad as well and that's sometimes difficult to pin down um so when you're there has to be a lot of process in naming like there's there's
00:40:08
Speaker
20 different ways to come up with new names of a business and each of those kind of have their own process. um And we've defined those and we have kind of list of thousands of names that we've done for other clients. and when we're doing a new one, we will go through and look and say, are any of these existing list of names of thousands of names that never been used? Are they available or were worthwhile to bring into this new project? um And not all of them will be, but it's a good place to start from.
00:40:35
Speaker
And I think that same process happens. You know, the one, the, the example in the book that I give, um is, uh, actually doing an annual campaign. And I think it was, um, specifically the first billboard campaign for Spotify, before,
00:40:53
Speaker
I forget the year, but they they had an idea of using data in their billboards for the first time, like customer data, which sounds a little scary, um but it's anonymized that it's and it's kind of very specific regionally, like to the New York or to London or Paris where the billboards were. um So one of the examples of the billboard was dear person who played, I'm sorry, 42 times on Valentine's Day. What did you do? Like they're all hilarious billboards. They still they're advertising today still reflects this kind of data and humor and very kind of specific geography. um
00:41:26
Speaker
But when they first came up with this idea, the creative team just didn't. It was pitched by the creative director and and the creative team just didn't get it. Um, so he spent the next year, um you know, kind of coming back to that occasionally and just mocked it up. And once he mocked it up the next year, um everybody saw it and got it right away and they just need a little more handholding to get that idea through.
00:41:46
Speaker
So like saving ideas that didn't work before, saving ideas that you haven't fully solved. Um, it's always, it's always helpful. And I, you know, I'm a big believer in lists, keeping lists. I have dozens and dozens of lists that I've been keeping me for years and years in my notes app on my iPhone.
00:42:02
Speaker
um Some of them over a decade. ah My longest list is my more bad ideas list of just counterintuitive examples of creativity. And that's, I think, four or 500 items long. And that's where almost all of this book came from is that list that I've been keeping for so long.
00:42:18
Speaker
So like that is a creative challenge I knew I would need is those examples of counterintuitive creativity. If I was going to prove that the nature of creativity is is ah kind of not what you'd first guess.
00:42:31
Speaker
um So you just have identify identify what those creative challenges are and and either start keeping a list on it or have some other process of spreadsheets or something or creative tools. um A lot of social media software now can allow you to have i idea boards and things like that.
00:42:46
Speaker
So i I think it's just you have to fit it to your specific need. um But it's immensely ah important to have that database of ideas and potential connections to work from. And it saves you a lot of time.
00:43:00
Speaker
i have ah I have a blog post I wrote about how to how to be faster with your creativity. um which isn't always possible, but it's a big demand on most creative people is to come up with something good and fast.
00:43:12
Speaker
um But one of the ways to be faster is to have that work done behind you, to have lists, to keep bad ideas, to keep good ideas, to keep ideas that are almost there um and be able to pull from that database when a new challenge hits your desk.
00:43:26
Speaker
So for what it's worth, the the way that I... found it worked for me to address this challenge that I am describing or or I think a lot of people run into is I just developed a process over time where when I have an idea, I just get it out of my head.
00:43:49
Speaker
So i could be driving somewhere, I'm listening to a podcast, they mention a book and I think that sounds like an interesting book or they mentioned a quote or I'm in the ah equivalent of yeah I'm in the shower and I have a crazy idea, you know, whatever, wherever I am.
00:44:08
Speaker
Some of them are not great places to make a note in my phone, you know, but I could be driving and I could say, hey, Siri or whatever, you know, make a note, send me an email, something to that effect.
00:44:20
Speaker
And I do it while I'm running. If I'm listening to an audio book and I have a related thought or just ah something that's completely out of left field. I usually have my AirPods in and I'll say, Hey Siri, send me an email and then I'll just dictate what the idea is. But the, it the place where i I, feel like a lot of people run into problems is that organization, like make getting the, from the initial idea, just out of your head and to a point and in a place where that thing becomes findable and usable.
00:44:58
Speaker
And so the process that I developed is basically, and of course, Siri's responding on my phone right now. And that has to happen, right? At least it wasn't on the computer.
00:45:10
Speaker
the, ah this method, I call it raft because the first step is, um, is an acronym. The first step is record. The next step is arrange.
00:45:21
Speaker
And basically it's just, instead of trying to like Jason, you have an idea, get it out of your head. That's the record step. Arrange is instead of trying to go back to that idea,
00:45:33
Speaker
and start to knead and mold that bread dough into its final form. Just get it from wherever it was.
00:45:43
Speaker
You sent yourself an email, for example, or you have a new Apple note, since it sounds like you're an iPhone user. Instead of taking on a project, just take the next step when you would pull out your phone normally. You're in an elevator, for example, or you're waiting in line at the grocery store or something. you're The time when you would check your email or you check Instagram for 30 seconds or whatever it is, instead just open that note and figure out where it needs to go.
00:46:12
Speaker
So if you had an idea that's for a specific client that you're working on, It will take you 15 seconds probably to look at it and not even assess if it's a good idea or not.
00:46:23
Speaker
Just to say, oh, I should drop this in the notes folder for that client. And then we start to split things up so it's no longer a pile of ideas. You know, a single note. It is for you maybe. It's, oh, that's clearly...
00:46:40
Speaker
That clearly belongs in my more bad ideas note. And so let's just get it out of the general place and into that place. And then there are other steps I call it so that it fits with raft. I call it frame, which is that's the time where you work on it and transmit. That's where you actually get it out into the world.
00:46:57
Speaker
and I'm not trying to sell my structure here. This is what works for me. and But more so, yeah i mean, I think it's obvious to you that I... feel like a lot of people just get buried under too many notes and then it becomes unusable because it's like and it's akin to analysis paralysis and so for me and what I do advise people to do is first of all get it out of your head but then Don't try and eat the elephant all in one bite.
00:47:29
Speaker
You know, take the next small bite by just take moving it over to the place where for you, Jason, if it was a brand name, it might be like, I have a brand names note.
00:47:41
Speaker
And that is where I put it. but It sounds like you You said you don't have a process or a structure, of something of that nature, but it sounds like you have one that even if it was not intentionally developed, you have found something that it clearly works for you. There is a structure there.
00:48:00
Speaker
I do have, i do exactly what you proposed, which is I i do have notes for every client I have that I do write ideas into. And I have very specific things. So like i you know, will come up, I have not written a fiction book and I ultimately do want to write a fiction book.
00:48:16
Speaker
And I have a note for character ideas. I have a note for book ideas, um for plot ideas. So I have specific enough places for these things to go that when I come up with something I want to record, I kind of know where it's going to go. If I don't, I will start a new list.
00:48:35
Speaker
Um, and we'll put it there. So, you know, it's, again, that's, that is my process. There is, there is a little structure to that. Um, I think, I think people also have this problem when it comes to bookmarking things on social media.
00:48:50
Speaker
Um, so when they created bookmarking folders, I think that was amazing, but still a lot of people don't go back and use those. I think. putting something on your calendar on a regular basis. if If it's something you really do want to start using more, you know, you need to use more. If it's for a client, it's for work, it's for whatever, a repeatable problem that you have, a creative challenge that you have, um putting something on the calendar to actually say, yeah, once a month, I'm going to go through this bookmarks folder or once a month, um'm I'm going to go through this list on my phone or whatever it is.
00:49:17
Speaker
i think that's useful. we We do this at our conference as well, where we I give a kind of the same recommendations for everybody that attends our conference and I talk about it at the top of each show, which is pick one problem to focus on while you're at the conference. doesn't mean it's not, it's like ah it's not the only thing you have to learn while you're here, but it's the thing that will make the biggest difference if you're able to help solve it or make some impact.
00:49:40
Speaker
um And then when you're listening to sessions, listen for stuff that will impact that one problem. When you're talking to people in the hallway, maybe ask questions about, has anybody figured out a way to do a podcast promotion on TikTok? Because that's something we're struggling with. oh Working into conversations, like don't be overly obsessed with it, but look for opportunities in every interaction, every session to to kind of, you know, create that list of ideas that you can bring back to solve that problem.
00:50:08
Speaker
um And then specifically come back to it. So I asked people to set calendar reminders after the conference for, you know, next week, set a seven day calendar reminder to come back and look at your notes, rewatch the sessions and, you know, actually put stuff into action and even set additional calendar reminders of 30 and 60 days out to see what If, you know, to make sure you're actually putting stuff into action and moving on it. um So, yeah, I think the key is to have a system of some sort that allows you to organize your ideas and to come back to them.
00:50:43
Speaker
And that's kind of different for everyone. But I think putting stuff on the calendar is is kind of the first step there. So related to this, you, I wrote this down and I forget, do do you mention Stephen King in your book or no?
00:50:59
Speaker
Yes. Stephen King threw away one of his manuscripts and it took someone else realizing it was a good book for him to publish it. um So it was a It was in a a part of the book where I talk about kind of the myth of solo creativity. Like everybody, even if you're the most creative person, other people are still involved in your creative process somehow in different ways. um And the editing or kind of rallying around ideas, one of those ways. But yeah, I think that's the one mention of Steve. he He's a wealth of like kind of creative process and recommendations. So, you know, I think there's he has a lot to share.
00:51:34
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah. I agree. mean, what gets called out a lot or recommended a lot is his book on writing, right? Because he talks about his process in there. And so you, and you also mentioned fiction. So this relates in a number of ways. I think I follow you on Goodreads or something because I use Goodreads a lot. And I used to see you posting, or I used to see updates, maybe it was from Kindle or something, or maybe you go in there directly, you reading a lot of fiction. So I'm going to come back to a a different question about fiction in a second, but there is an interview. i think it, I can probably find it on YouTube. And if I do, I will link to it.
00:52:18
Speaker
But there's an interview between Stephen King and George R.R. Martin. And they're two really interesting people to have a discussion if you happen to be into fantasy or writing or, or you know, whatever. Yeah, they're both super talented.
00:52:36
Speaker
Yeah, Stephen King asks George
Learning from Creative Masters
00:52:39
Speaker
R.R. Martin... when you're writing and you have an idea or what you're going to do later in your story or for a character or for a new book or whatever else, what do you do with those ideas? And George R. r Martin says he keeps everything in his head for the most part, which is I'm going to be overly simplistic here and say the polar opposite of the way that Stephen King describes things.
00:53:05
Speaker
And, you know, he, I think it's in on writing, but then he's talked about it plenty of other places. He talks about, he learned over time that for him to be the kind of writer that he wanted to be, to feel successful, productive, whatever his,
00:53:20
Speaker
goals are, he found that he had to write six pages every day. And i yeah I forget if you talk about this exactly, but it's, there's some relation nonetheless to you referencing Stephen King.
00:53:33
Speaker
And he talks about, i think it's in the interview with George R.R. Martin. He talks about that when he's writing one story and he has an idea for a different story,
00:53:45
Speaker
he will make a note. You know, he has like a notepad or something next to time him. I don't know exactly what the medium is, but he'll make a note of everything. It could be something that he has to pick up at the grocery store, you know, or some accounting things that he has to do or whatever.
00:54:00
Speaker
And he will just get it out of his head and then he will finish his six pages for the day. It's at least as he describes it, it is only after he has finished his six pages for the day that then he'll do other things. You know, he will go back to that list and say, oh, let me organize my different story ideas. Or let i had an idea about something that happened earlier in the story. and Let me go back there.
00:54:26
Speaker
And I will tend to use this as a an example of why organization matters for all of these creative off-the-wall ideas that we as human beings tend to have. that it It helps to be organized because, well, I mean, I can look at at least one example. Stephen King often publishes over a thousand pages a year in addition to travel and speaking and reviewing books and all that.
00:54:56
Speaker
And George R.R. Martin, being, I believe, Jason, a fantasy fan, you're probably well aware of this. I think it's been over 13 years now since he published the last book in A Song of Ice and Fire.
00:55:08
Speaker
And I might be wrong. But I think that a major contributing factor to him not being able to publish the next book is that he has a thought.
00:55:22
Speaker
And because he doesn't get it out of his head, i mean, how do how do I say to you, Jason, Did you ever have a creative idea about XYZ?
00:55:36
Speaker
And have you know which specific idea I'm referring to? You know, when, like, how do you remember something that you're not remembering at the time?
00:55:48
Speaker
An easy way to do it is to have a list of ideas. about a specific thing and go back to the list. You know, he has all these thoughts, but the memory is not reachable because he has to think about the thought first.
00:56:04
Speaker
I realize I'm getting into a bit of like an inception sort of thing. You have to have a thought about a thought about a thought here. And so anyway, I i bring that up because I think this is just one example that
00:56:17
Speaker
where you see the value of writing down ideas. You know, Stephen King is, he's like the McDonald's of authors. You know, he he's he's written a billion words and counting and George R. R. Martin's a little bit different, but I think Stephen King is able to be so creative to see the production of it because he doesn't let himself get distracted by those ideas. He's focused, but he does get them out of his head.
00:56:44
Speaker
I do think, um, I couldn't write like that, like George RR Martin. I do specifically when I have ideas when I'm writing, i will um yeah i will bracket stuff or put it and ah in a side list to come back to.
00:56:58
Speaker
um So I would probably prescribe to Stephen King's way of writing. But um I also think it's good. like He has a minimum number of pages. like you know Staying productive is is very interesting. But everyone comes back to um having to edit things in their own style.
00:57:15
Speaker
i I'm not sure... i I love reading fiction. There's several fantasy fiction, sci-fi authors that have gotten this multi-book series world where they kind of wrote themselves into a corner or it's just taking a long time to live up to their expectations and you humans are messy, so who knows what's going on in their lives.
00:57:37
Speaker
um But I think most reasonable people need to keep good notes on things to be able to make complex stories and complex complex solutions kind of come together.
00:57:49
Speaker
Am I wrong in thinking that it is counterintuitive to, it's counter to stereotype at the very least, to think that a creative thinker or an artist, an innovator would be organized, would have some sort of structure or process?
00:58:06
Speaker
no i mean i don't i think some are and some aren't i don't think you have to be organized to be creative um i think it can help in a lot of endeavors um but you know like if you're working on something very complex you kind of need like ah a schema uh you need like a some type of system thinking to really um understand large topics or complex topics but if you're a painter um you know, you can famously see a piece of cheese melting and get an idea for a painting, um as a story in the book goes, uh, and that's where you're going to paint. Like it's some, some creative challenges are not as complex and require just more taste than,
00:58:49
Speaker
you know engineering or topic specific knowledge. um It requires just actively perfecting that skill um and that point of view. so you know, I'm not, I'm not a believer that all creatives should have like a messy desk or where all creatives need a very structured workplace environment to to achieve a good outcome. I think it's different for everyone, different for every kind of specific creative challenge. I think you see that across the board.
00:59:18
Speaker
Like some people think you need to drink and do drugs to be creative. Some people think you that ruins creativity. Like it's, And you can actually find studies on both sides of that. um I think it's just more about um finding what works for you. Like, that's why I wrote the book in a way that is literally just a list of interventions, a list of tools, because i think everyone is very unique and specific and what works for them is is going to, you know they're going to know that better than I do.
00:59:47
Speaker
i think that... the context is so important that it's difficult probably for us to disagree exactly on this but i will support my but belief that more structure more process more organization is generally more valuable it by saying, so you talk about the Seinfeld's Pop-Tart joke in the book and you use it as an example of, I think a long creative arc or something like that. And I forget exactly how you characterize it. But the thing that I have always come back to with Seinfeld is he talks about this in, I think two documentaries about him. One is The Comedian, I think it's called.
01:00:43
Speaker
And then there's another one, I forget what, but he tells a story of sitting in a coffee shop in New York every morning and seeing construction workers walk by. you probably You may very well know this story. And he starts thinking to himself, they go to work every day, rain or shine, whether they are tired or not, whether they want to or not.
01:01:07
Speaker
And this is part of how they're able to have a career. is that they do the job even when they don't want to. And one way or another, maybe he describes it, he jumps to, maybe this has some relation to why so many comedians are hot for a year or two or three, and then you never hear from them again.
01:01:28
Speaker
Because in his experience, a lot of comedians wait for the creative bug to strike them. And if they have a writer's block sort of situation, then they might go years without a new idea or a joke. And so he says, this is when he began writing um sitting down and more or less nine to five every day, he writes jokes.
01:01:54
Speaker
And, you know, he also talks about in one of these documentaries that he's always been, you know, he has the yellow legal pads and the Bic pens or something like that. And I think they show a picture in one of these documentaries. And you touch on some aspect of this. I forget exactly how, but I often will go back to, and I did in my mind when I read you talking about the Pop-Tart joke,
01:02:17
Speaker
the The part that I focus on a lot is sitting down and doing the job even when you don't want to. And, you know, that if your job is to, it benefits from creative thinking.
01:02:36
Speaker
that not waiting to just have an idea, not waiting until you're in the shower or you're out on a run or whatever to have that creative thought. I do think that that's those are valuable times and you kind of talk about that as well in the book, but also saying,
01:02:52
Speaker
that I should have some dedicated time to come up with ideas. I should have some structure, some organization. And again, i having described all of that, I, like I said, I think context for each individual and each organization matters so much. That's a little bit difficult to disagree here.
01:03:12
Speaker
As much as to say, for me personally, when I read that Pop-Tart joke bit in your book, that section, what I thought about was, oh, I've just always focused so much, not on the long creative arc, as much as the discipline or the organization.
01:03:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, i think... You know, it is, creativity is active. You have to put it into practice. The more you do, it's the better you'll be at it. So, you know, Seinfeld's right. He, the example in the book for the pot tart joke is it, um, he works on jokes for months and that's editing mostly, right? He'll come back to jokes and really refine things to get them right.
01:03:49
Speaker
um so there's an experience factor there there's a taste factor there there's a um willing to work longer on a problem than other people um often get you to a more creative result all those things are happening sometimes it's also just incubation giving yourself more time to let your subconscious work at something um so yeah i think you have to have a process but it's i think it's less about process and it's more about um finding something that works for you and doing it consistently and coming back to it repeatedly so you get better at it.
01:04:20
Speaker
Like that's, you know, the iterative growth there is important.
Repetition in Creative Practice
01:04:25
Speaker
um I also think you have to build up inspiration in your world and inspiration is kind of messy. You can't really...
01:04:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:46
Speaker
i call that brushing up against life and that is i think an underrated part of creativity Um, you could work really hard at your craft and do really great things with it. Uh, but if you're not introducing new things into your own life, into your own mind on a regular basis, then you're not feeding that capability really well. So there's, there's a lot of pieces to this, but, um,
01:05:09
Speaker
I think, you know, finding the process that works for you, repeating it, getting good at it, and making sure you have interesting things, new things, new ideas that are different from your own perspective coming into your life on a regular basis is, those are core pieces of of ah of a talented creator, talented creative person's life.
01:05:27
Speaker
Jason, where should I go if I want to learn more? Obviously, I've read the book. You know, I believe you have your own website. You have Social Freshers website. There are social media channels.
01:05:40
Speaker
it Where should i go to learn more or connect if I'm curious about book and and this thinking? And then also... are there things that you would want to reinforce, double down on, words of wisdom, or even maybe things that we didn't touch on that you feel like, hey, before we end this conversation, let's get this statement out there?
01:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think in general, like my... whole philosophy is anyone can be more creative so if you're trying to have a better solution in marketing or something some other part of your life um that creativity is an active process it takes work it takes practice but it's fun so find ways to do that it could be games it can be reading it can be going to coffee shop talking to strangers like whatever it is, there's tons of ways to do it And we give a lot of, ex I give a lot of examples in the book, um, where you can find more, uh, my newsletter, morebadideas.com is where i write about creativity and marketing.
01:06:42
Speaker
Um, if you're ever interested in our agency or our social media conference, our next conference is coming up in March in New York city in 2026. Uh, you can just go socialfresh.com, uh, for information on that.
AI in Creativity
01:06:54
Speaker
Um, And I think one thing I'll add that we didn't touch on today is we have started playing with um AI and creativity. And I think it's interesting because I think it really reinforces everything we talked about today. A lot of people use AI for kind of brainstorming and it's great for like a an initial list of directions and options for things, um titles or campaign ideas or whatever.
01:07:19
Speaker
Um, but it starts to get, it starts to feel a little kind of blah pretty quickly because it is an amalgamation of everything that's already been done in the world, right? So there's not a lot of new ideas there.
01:07:32
Speaker
I think it can help. Um, but to make AI good at creativity, you, there's a couple things you can do and we have prompts. My newsletter, you actually get a lot of these prompts that we've made for creativity, AI prompts.
01:07:43
Speaker
Um, most of them are marketing based, uh, for context, but to make it better, one of the things you can do is you can train it to do a specific task based on how a creative does it. So like one of them is coming up with names. So we've trained an AI prompt basically on how a human would do It's just telling it how a specific human would be creative in that um in that role is very useful.
01:08:07
Speaker
Another way to make it better is iteration by saying, hey, give me 20 ideas. I'm going to tell you my favorites, number them, and then do that again and then do it again and do it again. You can get through hundreds of ideas in minutes um by just giving it feedback. And none of this is perfect, but I think that's interesting because these same steps that I outline in the book are also how you would make AI more creative. um It's how humans and AI both work can be more creative uh so they're they're repeatable and they're tested and i think you know making sure that you're building up a skill set um that you're getting better at and making sure that you're feeding that skill set with more more interesting ideas on a regular basis those are kind of some of the core elements yeah i wish we had more time because there was a point in the conversation earlier even where
01:08:59
Speaker
think it was, you were talking about having hundreds or thousands of brand name ideas, something like that. And I was thinking, you know, having a big list and being able to say, okay, here is the list of names that I've liked before.
01:09:19
Speaker
Now, here's the challenge that's ahead of me. Here's the client details or whatever. Which of these and perhaps even which new ideas might you have that would give me a list of options?
01:09:34
Speaker
You know, i and so we could talk so much about AI, but I had thought about that earlier. I know we should we just had more time, but I will throw in here as well. Let me ah support what you were saying about multiple rounds.
01:09:51
Speaker
yeah I think that's where a lot of people who just start, somebody says, oh, you should tell you should use ChatGPT. And they go and try something. Or maybe it's not ChatGPT. They use whatever.
01:10:02
Speaker
They try something and the first round that they get back is not good. And then they think, well, this is just terrible. AI is really dumb or something of that nature. And I feel like it's I was just willing to play, I guess, earlier on and or deal with rounds of things not working such that after saying, no, that's not good or no, I don't like it like that or can you give me more like this?
01:10:31
Speaker
I would get to something that I thought was a really good output. but maybe it's related to having bad ideas. if Or one of the questions I asked earlier, if you're not willing to go through some work, then it's very unlikely that you're going to have AI help you be creative.
01:10:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think the the best use of AI for creative output is are the most people most creative people using these tools. Like if you're a good video editor, you're going to do better at getting... uh, VO3 to produce a ah really good video result. Um, so the human skill is still pretty important.
01:11:11
Speaker
Okay, Jason, I know we're short on time and I don't want to have you bump right up to whatever's coming next. So I will largely wrap it here and say, i recommend
Conclusion and Recommendations
01:11:24
Speaker
your book. I really liked it. I think this was the perfect length and actually you really, it was,
01:11:31
Speaker
really well written for what you present and what I think you're, what what you've said you're trying to accomplish. So I think it's great. I think it's actually a really good resource. I don't know if you give it to your clients or sell it to your clients, but I would imagine without being too self-promotional or whatever, you know, if I was in your shoes, I actually do think that this is great resource for your clients. So I recommend your book.
01:11:56
Speaker
I appreciate you being here, especially after not having any digital or real world interaction for, i don't know, 15 years or something. So thank you for being here. I appreciate it, Jason.
01:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, thank you, Eric. My pleasure.