How To Be Creative. Can Everyone be Creative?

The leaf is white. The first line is started a thousand times, deleted, started again and deleted again… until it finally stops as it is. The fingers now type faster and the sheet fills up. The white is displaced. But why suddenly? Where was the point at which it started? Where does it actually come from – creativity? Are some people creative and others not? And can you learn to be creative?

Questions over questions. I have started to search for answers. Because we at Cleverclip develop concepts, ideas and scripts every day. Much of it is unusable – but some of it deserves to be shown to the customer. How exactly do these ideas come about and what makes the difference to a less successful idea? I asked around my colleagues.

If you now hope for a complete and true answer, I have to disappoint you. But, some suggestions and ideas I can present to you. The answers I have received range from moderately creative – showering or running, for example – to really well thought-out. And I don’t want to withhold a few from you. From a scientific point of view, taking a warm shower is really conducive to creativity, by the way. But who can take a warm shower all day long? And the same probably applies to alcohol…

DIY – creativity

Inspiration: For some, the enemy of creativity seems to be a white leaf. To generate ideas, they search the Internet and hope for the one image, the one sentence, the one crucial cat video on Youtube to be struck by the flash of inspiration.

Imagination: Instead of looking for the decisive image on the Internet, some people develop it themselves. How? Quite simply. Imagine doing something creative for ketchup. The first picture that shoots into your head you hold. Draw it up and then see what history and structure can be developed around it.

Collaboration: The Internet has failed and no pictures are created? No problem either. At dinner with friends some of us steer the topic in the right direction and see what happens. But be careful, don’t steal finished ideas.

Perspective vision: New ideas arise when things are viewed differently. So just change your point of view and see which thoughts arise.

Distraction: Do something completely different – dance salsa, play guitar, something that has nothing to do with the topic. Distract the brain. This will release blockages and the creative idea can spring up more easily.

Collective action: Sounds like Messie, is also a bit like that. Some of us collect – everything. Whenever something is found that attracts attention, it is taken and hung on the pinboard. This creates a real conglomeration of interesting things. These can be postcards, books, poems, flowers… just everything that attracts attention on the way. And when you are faced with a problem, look at the wall and maybe you get stuck at a point – and the idea in your head starts to grow.

So much for the personal ways at Cleverclip to come up with creative ideas. But there are other ways. Special techniques and approaches. A few I introduce here.

Tools – creativity

Insight Based: This approach is especially interesting if the result of your creative outpouring should not only be relevant for you but also for a certain target group. Let’s say you’re creating a new campaign. Or a TV spot. Or an e-training video. So before you just look for and develop one idea after the other, take a look at the target group and your topic. And then you look for the interfaces, the insights. That’s something everyone knows. Something from the topic that everyone knows. And then you give it a twist. So that something familiar becomes something surprising. But be careful: don’t tap into the cliché trap. It’s always worth thinking a little longer about insights. First, there’s always more than one and second, there’s a difference between cliché and insight.

Breaking Borders: A very valuable approach when it comes to developing creative solutions. A simple example: You want to buy a new car, but you don’t have the money for the necessary down payment. What can you do?
Have you already had three ideas? Write them down and now imagine that you are not a car buyer but a salesman. Maybe you’ve just developed creative solutions and new products that will make it even easier for you to sell cars.

This blog could go on forever. And as I said, there’s probably no truth and no definitive answers. But maybe the post inspired you to try one or the other idea or technique.

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