Ep 10 Creativity: How to build a product or creative strategy

In this episode of The Crazy One, Stephen Gates delves into the crucial role of strategy in the creative process. Discover the eight essential questions that every creative leader must answer to lay the groundwork for successful products and innovative ideas. With insights drawn from years of experience, Stephen guides you through the key components of effective strategy, helping you refine your vision and align your team for success. Whether you’re developing a new product or enhancing an existing one, understanding these foundational questions is the first step toward achieving your creative goals.

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Here we are the 10th episode of The Crazy One podcast. There's some part of me that feels like we should have a cake without some candles and have a little party to celebrate this momentous event. But then again, I don't know, maybe it's just been a long weekend, I want some sweets. In either case, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, and a whole host of other things that matter to creative people. And so this week, we're going to talk about strategy. strategies, an interesting word, strategy is a big word. But strategy is an important word for VA to understand. And I think that strategy is something I think a lot Not a lot of people really understand. I think it's something that I didn't understand for a really long time. I thought strategy was that thing that was often made up by a guy who I worked with, who had an MBA, went to some fancy school, and more times than not probably had a British accent. But as I've come to find out that's actually Not the case. And it maybe isn't quite as daunting. And it is a lot more important than you might actually realize. So we're gonna take a look at that today. But before we jump into that, I just want to take a moment to say two words that I feel like aren't said nearly enough for a lot of different reasons. And those words are Thank you. Because whenever I started this little project of mine 10 episodes and however many hours of content ago, I had no idea what the reaction was gonna be. I knew that I talked about some of the stuff on stage, I knew that I've written about some of it, and that had gotten a pretty good reaction. But I had no idea if anybody was gonna listen to this podcast had no idea if anybody was gonna give it the time of day. And I wanted to say thank you because the reaction has been unbelievable. It's been more than I ever could have hoped for. All not only in listeners, but just in the feedback that I've been getting back. Because the reality is, is that I stand here in my studio in front of a microphone, recording all this content and I have sent that out into the void I have no idea if it has value for people, I have no idea if it connects, or if it makes things better. Because there's not an audience I can see in the past whenever I've done talks, I can see if people leave the room, I can see if they're taking notes or laughing or if they're engaged here, I can't. And so for all of you that have sent emails for all of you that have reached out for all the posts that have been on social media, I love that now even hashtag the crazy one is starting to become a thing as people are posting the stuff that they're working on. So for all of that, and more, I just wanted to take a minute and say thank you, because it does mean a lot and that people who who take the time and take the effort to reach out. It doesn't go unnoticed. So I just want to take that quick time, like I said to say thank you. But on with the show. I think the first thing we need to do is let's define what strategy means or at least what it means for me or what it means for this show. I was trying to figure out how do I explain why I think strategy is important or how How does it play into my creative process? Because I think so many people think strategy is a creative brief. In some ways that's true. In some ways. It's not because I think so many creative briefs, what's not a strategy, a creative brief in so many cases is just a list of deliverables. And so when I thought about how can I explain this so people can understand it, as in so many things, when it comes to creativity, I started to think back to my childhood. And I love playing games, all kinds of games, board games, video games, everything else. And I thought about when I started to play chess, and how chess was different. It was different from all the other games that I played, because it required me to think ahead. It required me to have well a strategy that it wasn't just kind of assessing the board and taking the next available move that if you wanted to win, and if you want to be good at it, you had to think ahead. And as I went on, and I enjoyed playing it more and Yes, I will publicly admit that I was a member of the chess club in my high school judgment if you want. But what I learned there was that you did have to think ahead, that in most cases, whenever you play chess, you needed to be probably thinking ideally, at least eight moves ahead, if not thinking about all the way to the end of the game, because what you needed to do was to be thinking about what are the possibilities? If I move this piece, what's the response that I want to elicit? And then what am I going to do to that and so at every move, you would have to completely reassess your strategy. And you'd have to think about these sorts of things and play the game ahead in your head, and how successful you were often dependent on your ability to do this. And so often, whether it was my father or my chess coach, they would teach you this phrase, and the phrase was, don't move until you can see it. And what that meant was to not make the next move in the game, not move that piece on the board until you can The strategy until you can see how you're going to win the game or how you're going to get to your next objective. But it's that sort of an idea that don't move that until you see it. Well, that's kind of what strategy is for my creative process. And I think it is for a lot of other people, too, that it's how do I come up with a game plan? How do I identify the possibilities? And how do I come to realize what are the areas that I want to go explore that I'm going to start with the next move. And I think that as that expresses itself, in the creative community, that can take on a lot of different forms. I think it's best that it comes in the form of people who are strategists, the profession that deals with research and insights and trends and so many of these other things that in my career, some of the most talented people I've worked with, some of the best work I've done has been based on the work of some really incredible strategy. Who came up with some really fantastic insights that I could base my work on? Well, the reality is, I'm not a strategist, I'm not somebody who can go into that level of depth, because it's just, it's not my wheelhouse. So what this episode is going to look at is really a creative person's version of strategy. What are the basic things that you're going to need to know to go Be creative? What are the answers that you need to have, so that you don't move until you can see it, that you work with your clients, you work with your team to be able to get to these. So that's really for me just the starting point of just kind of setting the stage of what this is going to be that there are plenty of other people who are far smarter than me who can speak to much more of the the science and the real art behind strategy. But for me, this is just, this is the one on one, this is the basics behind this. So from there, I think that one of the biggest things that A good strategy needs to do is that it needs to let you empathize with the people that you're designing for. Because the reality is, is that for so many creative solutions, that's really where I see it fall down, is because the designer, the creative, whoever it was created something for them. But they weren't maybe necessarily the target demographic. And so how do you reconcile that. And I think that a big part of strategy and a big part of this kind of setup, is the ability to get to a place where you can understand and then empathize with the people that you're designing for. Because if you can't do that, if you can't develop that short term memory loss, to be able to take what it is you're working on, and look at it with fresh eyes and look at it with the eyes of the people who are going to be using it. You're not going to be able to develop something that is truly successful, that is truly impactful, because it's just going to fail. Feel superficial. And so, over the course of my career, I've gone to what I would openly term as in some cases, probably some fairly crazy lengths to try to find empathy to try to find empathy for the people that I'm designing for two examples that I'll tell you about. The first one is, I am sure that there are still some gas stations in the state of Texas in New York that I am still not welcome back to. And the reason why is that for a good part of my career, I was working on multiple automotive accounts. And what I would want to do is I would want to understand the consumer who was driving buying or considering this particular car. Well, what I didn't want to do for me in the way that I worked was I didn't want to just get that opinion behind a one way mirror in a focus group because I think it's valuable but I think that so often, those people tend to perform a little bit more They aren't necessarily really giving you the true story. So what I would do is I would, as creepy as it might sound, go hang out at gas stations, waiting for the owners of these particular brands to show up. Because I wanted to talk to them about what do they love about their car? What do they hate about their car? Would they buy another one? You know, what were the things that made them the happiest about it because what I was doing was I was looking for insights. And I was looking for empathy with them so that I could understand their mindset so that as I worked on this business, I could put myself into that mindset. And as you can imagine, some people when it comes to their cars love to talk about them, especially some of the brands I worked on, like Subaru and others have very, very passionate, very passionate basis that really love their cars. And so those people will talk at great length, great detail with me about their cars and there was no substitute for that information for me. But as you can also imagine some people weren't quite as welcoming, when a six foot four man who would want to walk up as a stranger to them at a gas station and say, Hey, can I ask you some questions. And for those who aren't quite as amused by it, those are the places that I often wasn't invited back to. But it was worth it. It really gave me the insight that I needed. The biggest extreme that I took this search for empathy to was when I started to work for Starwood Hotels, because I'd stayed at a hotel before. I'm sure we all have, you know, to go to this place you check in, you have your room for a few days, and you leave. But the reality was, as I started working at the company, I realized my challenge was something different. Because the guests that really mattered, well, those were the people that were staying 50 100 200, sometimes even 300 or more nights a year with our company. I didn't have any idea what that was like. I had no idea what it was like to live out of a hotel room. How do you wrap your head around that and get that context? Well, The opportunity presented itself because I was moving from my house in Dallas selling that home to move back to New York City. And during that time started to come to me and said, Look, there are two options we can do here. until you find the house here, you can either stay in corporate housing, or we can put you up in a hotel, we own a few of those. And thinking about it, once my wife and using some sort of a Jedi mind trick convinced her that staying in a hotel would be a good idea. So for the next 364 days, somehow enjoying the irony that it was one day short of a full year. We stayed in a hotel at the Westin Hotel in Morristown, New Jersey. Anybody who knows me knows that New Jersey and I maybe don't share the same sort of design aesthetic, or that a lot of cases the same taste in music or theoretically much else. And I know that saying that there are people who I'm sure listen to the show from New Jersey. I have friends who are from New Jersey, I stayed there. So it's not a judgment on it. But just simply there are some things that aren't compatible. This happened to be one of them. But it was worth it. Because what I did was over the course of that, basically a year, I sat in the lobby, I watch people, I got to know the front desk staff, I got to really understand what are the things that are really a challenge for them? Were the places that we from an experience could really make a difference. Where could we own the experience? Where did the brand matter? Where could the brand make an impact and a whole host of other things? That being there and experiencing it firsthand let me do I will say that I was glad when it was done. Because it's somebody who loves to cook whenever you spend a year in a hotel room, you realize that cooking becomes this really twisted version of I don't know what Iron Chef or Top Chef or something like that, where you go to the grocery store. Come back to the hotel room, and then try to figure out what culinary masterpiece Can you whip up and the combination of a small hotel microwave and a hot pot, I can tell you that a lot of them are derivatives of soup and mac and cheese, and not a whole lot else. So I was very happy to get back to a place where I could cook and find a few more creative outlets again. But it's like I said, I did this because I needed to know the customer, I needed to be able to empathize with them. And because I think that is best. That's what strategy does for creatives. It gives us the answers and it gives us the walls to the problem that lets us be able to figure out what's the opportunity and the insight. So over the course of my career, as I've done this creative version of strategy, I've narrowed down how I create this to eight simple questions. I'm sure there's some people who use less they're probably some people who use more, but I feel like these are the eight that really encompass in the best and simplest way probably What do I need to know? How are things going to give me what I need to get started? The one thing that I'll also say about this, and about these eight questions, just as a best practice, is that whenever I work through these eight questions, I always do it as a conversation as an actual conversation between me and the client. Because what I've found is that too many people try to do it, what I guess I would say is a bit more of the lazy way, where you send them over in an email, asking the client or clients to go through, think about this, fill it out, and send it back. And I just think this is too critical. This is the foundation This is setting up the problem that I need to solve. I can't be lazy here. I can't take the easy road I need to be able to invest this time. Because if this is a client that quite honestly if I want to work with them more than once I have to get these insights I have to be able to start to figure out what my matters to them. And if I just send it over in writing, I'm missing far too many opportunities. Because there are too many places where I don't get to participate in that debate that's going in their head. I don't get to ask the follow up question. I don't get to press them, I don't get to really see that look in their eye and question if they're really telling me the truth or not? Or if that was just a convenient answer. So that's the one best practice I would tell you is when you work through these eight questions, if at all possible, do it in person, because the information that you will get, and the work that will be resulting from that will be so much better because of that. So on with the eight questions, and for those of you who don't want to scribble furiously, or stop and start this podcast to capture these, head over to the website, I'll throw them in the show notes. So once again, you don't have to scribble all this stuff down if you don't want to. But the first question, simple, straightforward, and honestly should be the start of every creative endeavor. What are we creating And why we've talked about this before, we've talked about the importance of why Simon Sinek has built an entire Empire asking this question, rightfully so, because most companies will be able to tell you what they do. They'll be able to tell you how they do it. Very few are able to tell you why. And I think especially as it comes to the foundation of creativity, understanding why we're doing this is so incredibly important because the Y will help you really uncover what's the single most important obstacle this project has to overcome. What are we trying to achieve? Do we want more market share? Do we want to drive awareness? Is it frequency or penetration? Is it increased sales, what's the business need or what's the consumer need? We're trying to solve for? Because that's what you have to have. You have to have the why you cannot And trust me, if you want to have a real short conversation with me, start one of these projects with an execution. We want to be on Twitter, we want to landing page, we want to blog. That's not a why that's not a consumer need. It's not a business need. That's an execution that is more often than not doomed to fail. Because what you're doing is you're taking an execution, and then you're trying to back into a reason for being you're trying to create a problem. Well, creating a problem means that whenever I get there, I'm not going to be solving a real problem. I'm not talking to a real audience. What I'm doing is I'm talking to myself, and the world already has more than enough of these executions that just simply talk to themselves. So make sure that there's a challenge there. Make sure that there's a why and that there's a problem. Because if not, this is what you get is you get clients who show up with a solution already done that they just want to be vetted, instead of a problem that they want to have solved. And that makes all the difference. In the world, because that same client will talk to you about how they want innovation and creativity, and all of these things that will never happen. By starting a journey, when you know where it's gonna end, those things come out of starting that journey with a problem and not being sure where it's gonna land in the end. And I think that's the biggest and most important thing. And if they do want to give you just the execution, and they can't articulate the why you've got to push back. Because if you want to be successful, if you want to continue to work with them, if you want to be more than just a commodity, and a resource that does what they say, if you want to have value, which is what is essentially the most important thing that we all want to do is we want to create value for our clients. This is where you have to start to make that stand. This is the moment because if you don't do it here, and you let the project roll on thinking, well, we'll show them some other ideas and sort of some other executions. Once we're into creative well we'll change their mind there. I've rarely I do mean rarely ever seen that workout. I think that it's easier. Because when it's still in those early days, well, the common fear is the client is going to go use somebody else, they're going to walk away, and you're going to get scared, or your management is going to get scared of your account director is going to get scared, somebody's going to say, look, we don't want to lose this job. But the reality is, if you don't take advantage of that moment, and if you don't try to push back, you are going to lose the job, you're just going to lose it a little bit further down the road. So I think that to me, is where you have to try to find that way to be able to push back. The next question really comes out of as with most things, it's hard to know where you're going if you don't know where you've been. So this is for me really spending time to understand what is the brand's past? What's the client's past? Because I want to understand where they've been. Where have they been, from a positioning standpoint, a personality standpoint, what have they been focusing on? What are the things that have mattered to them? Do they still matter or not? Because one of the things I found is that if that activity has shifted, if you see them continuing to Dart from direction to direction without finding traction or success, well, that's a warning sign. And you need to understand why do they keep doing that? Why does this change keep happening? Is it because the people that they're working with aren't pushing back that there isn't a why there's not a problem to be solved. So they keep putting something out into the market expecting great results, only to find mediocrity. They then instead of blaming themselves and understanding what the problem is, well, they put it on the creatives. They didn't do the right execution. They didn't understand us, let's go get new ones. And time after time, this sort of thing keeps happening. So I think that this is one of those things where you have to just take the time to to understand where they've been as a precursor for how can you be successful? And are there any issues that you need to be aware of to start working on and overcoming So from there, the third thing couldn't be simpler. It couldn't be any more straightforward. What do we need to do? Why are we here? Because I do think that some part of it is and while the Why is unbelievably critical, the wide links to a deliverable. There's a budget, there's a timeframe. There's something that needs to be fulfilled. So how are we going to do that? And what exactly are we working with the what, at the end of the road, this is the point where we do want to dig into that. The next thing then starts to really form the foundation and the basis for the empathy that I talked about in the beginning. Because now we want to start learning about their customers, or at least what do they think their customers are? The basic and the easiest way to start with that is to start talking about who are we talking to, from a demographic standpoint, basically, what are the physical characteristics of your clients and they should be able to give you this kind of stuff. Because it should be a snapshot that they're working to constantly for that target person that they're talking to. And demographics commonly include things like age, gender, religion, income level, education, family composition. The other thing that you need to do is to take that and ask one more very, very important question. And the question that I've learned that needs to be asked there is, is this demographic is this target based on real research, that whenever you see the people who are buying your product, who are buying into your brand into whatever the the challenge may be, is this the actual person that's doing it? And do you have research to prove that? Or is this who you wish would be buying your product? Because I've seen both. And the second one where it's the aspirational target, it's the one oh geez, these are the people who we wish were buying our products. That way We'll cut you off at the knees every single time. Because what you're going to find is you're going to design for this mythical person, this person that they wish they were talking to, well, whenever it goes out into market, the person that they are actually talking to so if they wish they had a 20 year old man who lives in New York City making $200,000 a year, but who they are actually talking to as a 50 year old man who makes under $50,000, a year in Iowa. Well, you can see how this problem was set up. Because the tone the every everything that gets created around it is not going to talk to their actual audience. So what you need to do is to understand the gap between the two and how do you guide them to migrate them from the 50 year old and Iowa to the 20 year old in New York City, but you have to do it over a series of stages that we can't win the game in one move. But I think this is just it's a little wrinkle, but it's incredibly important. And like I said, your client should be able to have these things. answers. But even if they don't, this is where I think you still need to be able to go out. You need to be able to try to do some of this other work to just validate it, to understand it, to talk to the people to really find those ways that you can have real empathy that you can understand them as people, not just as a bunch of stats on a piece of paper, because that becomes too dissociative. You can say, Oh, I can. I'm a 40 year old man, I can think like a 60 year old woman, bull shit. No, you can't, not without really spending some time to really understand the problems, the challenges, and even then, something like that maybe has a bridge too far. But you have to make it real. And you have to be able to really understand what matters to these people to design something that's really successful. So beyond the base demographics, the next part of it is to look at the psychographics and psychographics is just a big $3 word, to really just talk about what are the mental characteristics of those clients. And again, they should be able to provide this stuff to you. But this should really talk about what's the consumers mindset? What's their personal values? What do they believe in? What are their habits? And what are some of their activities, because basically, this is starting to really understand the brain to understand more than just the physical composition of my age and family makeup. But it really starts to help me understand kind of that mental model, because that psychographic influence is so incredibly important because what that does, is that really defines the way that these people look at the category you're working in. It defines how they look at the brand. And it also may really define the individual product that you're trying to design something for. And those things, those beliefs, well, that affects their behavior and their attitude. So I think that you know, you have to take the time to figure out how to understand this stuff to be impactful. So there's a lot of different ways you can do it. But those two Really just go to the fact that you you've got to simply understand who you're designing for. I don't think there's any way around this. So from there we go back to the brand a little bit. We've looked at the brand's past. But the other thing that I want to understand is really, what's the brand's personality? What's its tone? You know, what's his personality, because I think those things really reflect its behavior, its character, its manner, because what I want to do is I want whatever it is that I create, to be a reflection of the brand on a lot of different levels. On its most base level, it needs to have the right logo and the right colors and the right tone of voice. And I think that that is also the reason why you want to ask is because you want to make sure that your client understands that a brand is more than those basic things that I know whenever I'm sitting across from a client, and I asked them about their brand. And they hand me an Illustrator file and a PMS chip. I know we were in for some work to do because that's not a brand. That's a visual language, very, very different to offer. I'm confused. But what I want to do is I want to understand the personality and the talent because I want to infuse it into everything. I've even been somebody who will take it down to the way an interface interacts, for instance, the way the transitions happen in a video or a film, because we'll just take two brands that I used to work at will take something like w hotels, and we'll take St. Regis well those are far enough apart. W is very much young trendsetter hip energized. It focuses on design, music fashion, it's placed, the world of trendsetting is very different. So the way that interface would move or the way that that video would move is going to be much faster, it's going to have a lot more energy so that the way I would think about a transition, the way I would think about the way an element comes onto the screen is going to be very different than if I think about a brand like St. Regis, St. Regis bespoke luxury, old world that New York City creation of Astor family of the midnight suppers in the opulence of the era, well, then that's going to be something very different. Because when I think of bespoke, and I think of luxury, there's less movement, but the movement is much more deliberate, it's much more tailored, it's much more thoughtful, it's probably slower and just a bit more meaningful. So that even again, the way that I would build a transition, the way I would build, the way a button comes in, or an animation was done, well, those things are going to need to get expressed. But I need to understand at this point, what is the tone and personality so I can start to put that stuff together. So now as we kind of come down to the last couple of questions, now we really start to get to like the the meat of it the most important questions. So for this particular project, the one thing that I want to know is what is the selling idea? And if you don't know what that means, the way that I will describe it is the selling idea, quite honestly, is what's the single most pervasive thing that you can say to get attention tumor to alter their behavior towards the clients category towards their brand or towards a particular product. Because that's selling idea. Well, that needs to be the starting point to develop any compelling, any original or any successful idea. Because you have to have this if you can't say, why, if you can't say why it's differentiated, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. And I'll give you some examples of how the selling idea can kind of come to life. Some of the most basic ones would be what are ways of using a particular product? What are disadvantages for not using a particular product? How does what it is that we're creating this thing for? How does it satisfy some sort of a need? The need could be psychological, it could be social, it could be psychological. It just could be new ways of doing things. Think of the Ubers and Airbnb ease of the world and the way that they're solving those needs. It could talk about the product heritage Where how it was made. This is the the old guard brand as they try to figure out how to reinvent themselves when to lean on heritage. Or if you're going through that, and the selling idea is hard to come by, or if there isn't one. And I've worked on plenty of clients who I will not name, who haven't really had a selling idea, because they don't really have anything that's that terribly differentiated. So in that case, you have to then spring into action to try to figure out what is the selling idea. And so often what you'll try to do is just say, Okay, well, what's, what's a generic benefit that we can own? It's something that all the brands, all of the products or whatever it is in this category do, but there's this one particular thing that nobody else is taking credit for, or that nobody else is really owning. So we're gonna go own that. But I think that you know, this is that thing where this is the single thing that after the consumer sees your ad, experiences, your interface, your website, Your mobile app, your TV, commercial, whatever the expression of this is your food even? What is the thing that you want them to walk away and understand? If you had to say, what was that about? What did you take away from it? That's the selling idea is that takeaway is that thought that you plant in their head, and you have to be clear about what that is. And then that then really dovetails into, well, if that's the thought that we want them to walk away from. The last thing that I want to understand is, what do we want the consumer to do with that? If it's just brand awareness, it will just end there that we just want you to be aware. But in so many cases, we want people to do something. This is why this is commercial design. It fine art, just the impact. The feeling the expression, the engagement is enough, but for commercial art, it's something different. So what do we want them to do? Because that's the thing is that any great piece of creative No matter what form it does, it evokes an emotion or evokes an action. And so what's the emotion that you want them to have? And how should they feel about the brand? Just in the bottom line? What the hell do you want them to do? Because I think you have to be that clear about it. Because if you can't express it, if you can't express the selling idea, and then conversely, what you want them to do with that idea, well, how do you define success? How do you know if you did your job? Because if all of a sudden we're going to go out and start talking to consumers afterwards, and we said, okay, we want them to think this and do this. And if they do that, yay, success. It Rain, champagne and puppies. Whoo. But if we don't have that, how do we know if what we did worked? And so I think it's critical for you. It's critical for the client. It's critical if you want to keep getting work, that you do those things. And so, you go through, you sit down, you talk to the client You get all these answers. What now? So let's talk for a minute about how do we put those answers into action. Because I think that these really are a starting point. But what they should do is they should start to help you frame out the possibilities and where it is you go. And then that really starts to fall into three successive things that need to happen. And what those so often are, are that these questions allow you to start to get observations, you can take those observations and these answers. And from there, you can start to form insights. And those insights should then lead you to areas of opportunity. Let me explain what each of those meant for those of you who are going great, but I don't know what the hell any of that just meant. The observations are just what they sound like. They're the facts. They're the answers to a lot of these questions. That's what these questions lead you to as they lead you to observations and once You get these facts? Well, then you can look at those and start to craft insights, insights for you, or your version of the why. What's the human need behind that observation? If this is where the brand is, this is the selling idea and the action. How do I form that into understanding kind of what the need is what the thing is that we're trying to solve for. And that once I then have that, I can take these insights and I can start to cluster them together. I can go through, I can work with the team, everybody can write down all these insights that they have, do it on a bunch of sticky notes, let's all keep supporting three m, and start to put them up on the wall. And what you do for the opportunity is you start to take those sticky notes and start to kind of group them together and you'll start to see trends will emerge. And what those trends really are, are these are opportunities. And that by grouping them together, it makes it possible for this whole thing to become a bit more manageable and you can see these sort of potential design directions. One of the biggest examples that I love to use for whatever reason seems to be toothbrushes. I don't know why I know a lot of people that seem to have toothbrush stories. I talked about this in the second episode on creativity about how important it is to frame the problem. And at that point, I talked about toothbrushes in the context of if you have two different teams, and you're going to give them a problem to the one team, you say, I want you to rethink the toothbrush to the other team, you say, I want you to rethink how you clean teeth. That was simply done to illustrate the fact that whenever you're so prescriptive, about redesigning the toothbrush, that team is going to give you a marginally slightly better version of a toothbrush. As opposed to the other team. I asked to reinvent how to clean teeth. Well, they're gonna really go crazy. We'll keep the toothbrush, vibe rolling on, I guess. So let's take that observation, insight and opportunity. And let's use that for a toothbrush. If we said that the observation that we had we talked to the client was that we saw that a lot of people were they just weren't holding their toothbrush the right way and They weren't brushing their teeth very well. Right seems like a an easy observation. So out of that, the insight that might come out of that is that well, what we need to think about is that we need to think about how to better design the handles so that people could hold it better, because it's just one of those things where, since they aren't getting good brushing performance, maybe that's where there's an insight that we could do. Well, so then the opportunity that would come out of that was, well, then we need to go look at the design for the handle the handle kind of usability. It's just that ability to go from the fact that we saw to the insight that that led us to, to then really kind of look at Okay, from that insight, what's the real opportunity? What's the thing that we feel like we could go work on? And so the other thing that I'll do, and this comes from design thinking, is to then take those opportunities and opportunities really, like I said, these are just a group of insights that point out a common direction is that I'm going to take those opportunities, I'm going to form them into what we would call how much We statements, and how might we statements? And the reason why I think this has been so powerful the reason why it's part of design thinking, is that how Why might we statements really let you look at? How do you generate a question that will fire up and drive a brainstorm? Let's take this back to the toothbrush. So I can give you an example. Because how might we statements sound incredibly simple, but forming a really good one is probably one of the single hardest parts of the entire creative process. Because the problem is that if you make this statement too prescriptive, or you start to put the solution in it, you can't drive ideation, you can't drive thinking because you've got that solution inherently baked in, so I can't rip a lot of ideas off of that. But if it goes the other way, and it gets too big, well, it's like going to creative and giving them a project. And when they ask for these constraints, you tell them Do whatever you want. You kind of get paralyzed by all the possibilities that you need some sort of a framing mechanism to draw this To help define your creativity, but back to the toothbrush we go, we're trying to figure out how do we improve the usability of a toothbrush handle? Or to kind of motivate people to brush better, right? Like these are generally the opportunities that we feel like could come out of this. So a few sample, how might we statements would be things like, how might we make the brushing experience more fun? How might we help people experience the reward of brushing their teeth? Or how might we design for the particular shape of somebody whose hand a man a woman, for shape, for texture, for size for different things like that? These are then statements that I can give to the team. I can take the facts from the observation, the challenge of the opportunity, and I can start to make it into something that you can then go create against because I think that so often is why strategy it's so often why this process gets demonized. It gets overlooked or it just simply gets misunderstood, is because in so many cases As I see people who don't necessarily have to understand the inputs from the questions, the inputs from the opportunity and translate it into something that I can give to a creative team, and they can go start to work with. It's like I said, Good, how might we statements are really hard to come by. But the simplest test that I know whenever you start to work on them, is to just stop and test them. And I think that if I can look at how might we statement and just off the top of my head, I can quickly come up with five solutions, just knock them out one after another and say, okay, from that, how might we, I could do this, this, this, this this. And if I quickly am able to do that, that's a good one. If I find myself getting stuck, that I can't come up with the solutions, because it's too prescriptive, or I can't do it because it's too big. Well, then I know we need to go back and rethink it. So that's why I think this is so important. It's a tricky, it is more of an art than a science to figure out. How do you translate these sort of things into something that can then be actionable so that any creative person can go start? to work on it. I think that this is all a starting point that I think any great strategy, it has to distill all this stuff down and get to the heart of all this, it has to get to these great, how might we statements. And the problem is in many cases, I found the only way to get better at it is to do it a lot is to keep working at it. Because the more you do it, the better you'll get, the better your How might we statements will get the better your questions, and the more you know how to dig on that sort of stuff. And then it will start to really help kind of move you along with that. I did want to take a minute and give you a few of the traps that I'll see people fall into. Because when you go through and do this, it can be a trap that happens on the client side or it can be a trap that happens on the creative team side where there are just some common mistakes that people make. The first one is that the answers that come back to the questions are either fluff or their hope. And hope is not a strategy and the problem is that so many clients don't maybe know the answer is these questions. And they don't want to sit there in front of a bunch of people who they have hired and admit that. And so what they do is they once again give you this kind of a corporate buzzword bingo, all of these words that masquerade as a concept or masquerade, as, you know, something that sounds very compelling. But whenever you sit down and try to make something out of it, you try to draw out the insight, you try to draw out the How might we there's just nothing there. And so I think that you have to make sure that they're telling you something substantive. And if they aren't, and if they don't have those answers, you have to figure out how do we pivot and try to help them to get to that stuff. There's something real that we can work from. The second mistake that I see a lot is I see strategies that quite frankly, it they're just kind of fail to define the challenge. Because I think that's the whole part of this is that you have to define the challenge I have to have, what is it we need to do? What's the selling idea? What's the statement, I need to form that How might we? Because if not, this is a cousin to the fluff, right? Maybe there's a little bit more there. But if we can't define what it is that we really need to solve for, how do I know if my strategy is any good? I don't know if I works any good. How can I improve it? How can I test it? How can I know what success is going to look like, if there isn't a clear problem to be solved? And here again, I say this, because I've just seen too many teams who they have this reaction that Oh, we'll figure it out as we go. I don't think that that tends to be the way to do it. Because I think more times than not, you're not going to find any more answers further down the road if you couldn't get them in at the beginning. Because the further down you go, the more complicated it gets, the more artifacts are created, the more work is done, the more money is spent. And the more reason why a client will not come back and say, You know what, we really aren't clear on this. But at the beginning, when there's less skin in the game, and when there are fewer of these things, well, then I think that's the place to kind of jump in and do that. And the last one, I think as we go through this is really just what's a strategy that just fails to address the critical issue. Or it's just something that is just quite frankly impractical. And what I mean by this is that too many times I've worked with clients who want to solve the small, simple problem, somehow in the hopes that these small little things will actually jump in and solve the big pink elephant that's sitting in the middle of the room that they're afraid to tackle. I get it here. Again, I understand why you don't want to go take on the big hairy problem that's been sitting there with your brand with your product with whatever it is. But I think that we have to start with the small problem, but we have to have a plan for how do we solve the big problem? Because if that critical issue is still there, if we aren't solving for it, well, ultimately, we're not going to be successful because our work is not going to be successful. Because whatever that core issue is, will still remain. It's a tough conversation to have. It's not an easy thing to be able to do. I think that the other thing that that can express itself is for the fact that the client will show up and simply want something that is impractical or impossible. It is impractical from a time standpoint, from a budget standpoint, from a lack of clarity standpoint, from a lot of different reasons. And the hardest thing in the world, in the face of potential revenue, is to stand there and say, This doesn't make any sense. This is impractical and we can't do it. But the thing that I found, and this is not foolproof advice, this is not something that is going to work every time. So nobody quote me on this and come back and get angry. But what I found is for the good clients, the clients that I've stayed with for a long time, the clients that have let me do the best work. Often I've said no to that, I've told them at different instances that what they want to do isn't possible. And a funny thing has happened. They get very angry, they stomp off, they go and talk to a bunch of other people. And the phone rings a few days a few weeks later, with the client hand in hand calling me back saying we talked to a bunch of other people or We even went ahead and tried to do whatever the crazy thing was, and it fell flat on its face. And you were right. You should have told us No, and we should have listened. It is rare. It is vindicating, and it is awesome. But I think that this is one of those things where it's just you have to protect your creativity, you have to protect your team, you have to know how we're going to put ourselves in a place to be successful, and to take on the stuff that's going to let us do our best work and to be successful at doing it. Because if we do go out there, and we do fail, that's going to be an issue. And we're going to have an angry client that's out there. So those are just a couple warning signs that I want you to just keep an eye out for. So where do we end all this? Where do we put a bow on? So I think as a final thought, and the thing of why this is so important, is because the one truth that I've come to at the end of all this and the why the don't move until you can see it becomes so important is because when you step back and you look at creativity in any of its forms. The reality is is that great creativity is just simply an expression of great thinking. And I think that holds true in any of its forms. It's true of great design of great writing, of great food of great music of great TV shows a great anything, that the reason why that they're great. And the reason why we love them is because there was a thought that went into it. People took the time to come up with a strategy to come up with insights to figure out what was the story they were going to tell what was the problem they were going to solve? It's the things that don't do that. The things that just simply answer to design for design sake, or to function for functions sake. Well, those are the things that tend to fall down, they fall apart, because that's the reality, right is because design without creativity, that's production work, and CREATIVITY WITHOUT design or just a bunch of ideas running around. Without much of a impact or a form factor. The two have to go hand in hand and the creativity in that has to be based out of this thinking you have to understand that and that Every great strategy starts with a great thought. So that's it for this week. And so as always, thank you for the time. If you like the show, please do me a favor, head over to iTunes, Google Play anyplace else and leave a review. It's the only currency in the only payment I asked for. And it does a huge huge help to getting the show out there and to spreading the word. If you want to get those show notes if you want to be able to get a look at those eight questions and some of the other things like that. Head over to the website for the podcast, which is podcast dot Stephen Gates calm. Stephen is spelled STP h n. Gates like Bill Gates calm. As always, the boys and league want me to remind you that all of us here on my own, everything I talk about are just my own thoughts. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. And as always, thanks for the time. I say it every time because I mean it every time. The only true luxury that we have is time and I'm always incredibly appreciative that you won't spend any of it with me. And so as always, until now Next week and until we talk again, stay crazy