It’s time to ‘think creative’

A graphic of distorted lines and shapes depicting 'noise' for a NEO blog article for Think Creative

To cut through rather than be cut out, you need to ‘think creative’. To ‘think creative’ is multi-dimensional. It is about being able to challenge existing ways of seeing and doing things and to shrug them off altogether if necessary, to think around a problem to come up with the most effective creative solution.

To cut through rather than be cut out

I and the rest of the NEO team have always been of the mind that it was our job to stay out of the limelight, not to become social media demons or awards junkies.

Our primary focus has always been (and will always be) to help our clients develop the type of proposition, brand strategy, campaign planning, design materials and content they need to attract the attention they want from their target audiences.

We like providing our clients with the tools to shout about who they are, what they do, think and have to offer. We wouldn’t be doing what we do if we didn’t. That isn’t to say we advise clients to shout about just anything. Knowing when not to shout is just as important, sometimes more so. We aren’t interested in creating white noise that is tuned out. We want people to tune into our clients.

To cut through rather than be cut out, you need to ‘think creative’. You’ll probably hear us mention this more than once, but we particularly like the term ‘think creative’. To ‘think creative’ is multi-dimensional. Like a piece of cubist art or a 360 stop motion video, it is about looking at things differently. It is about being able to challenge existing ways of seeing and doing things and to shrug them off altogether if necessary, to think around a problem to come up with the most effective creative solution. But, despite being a creative process, it implies the presence of consciousness and critical reasoning.

When you ‘think creative’, you open up the barriers to your reasoning, rationalise, interrogate and then act (or not) on an idea, ensuring it has the best chance of achieving your objective. This isn’t about being creative for creativity’s sake.

As an aside, the opposite term to ‘think creative’ might be to ‘think constrained’, which in itself is a ‘brand constrictor’.

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When you ‘think creative’, you open up the barriers to your reasoning, ensuring it has the best chance of achieving your objective.

A sharing mindset

So, why did we change our minds about sharing some of our thoughts, insights and techniques more widely? Partly because recent events have offered us the opportunity to examine several different aspects of our usual modus operandi. It encouraged us to question our mindset on staying out of the limelight and to challenge what has become an accepted way of thinking for us. And, after some thorough interrogation of who we are, what we do, think and offer, we think we have ideas and approaches worth sharing that will be of value to our key audiences and won’t detract from what they do.

We hope you agree but, to paraphrase something said in a recent Cadbury’s campaign, if what we say doesn’t mean anything to you, that’s okay because it probably isn’t aimed at you.

Are you ready to be creative and grow your brand? Email thinkcreative@neoposition.com to get in touch.

Ps. Did you see one of our ‘spark cards’? Which one made you click? We’d love to know. We design two or three ‘spark cards’ (each with a different creative angle) for content pieces to see which is the most effective in cutting through and attracting attention. It’s a technique we can and do employ for clients to optimise their creative content.

The magicʼs in what we do together

We will be your partner for inspiring content, data visualisations and brand design. Add our independent thinking to your capabilities for alchemy that delivers creative gold – from concept creation and ideation through to execution and delivery.

We’ll work closely with you to create the kind of chemistry that makes you shine.

Let’s start the alchemy

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Let’s make magic