Goafest2023. The Seven Principles of Creativity

“It is our responsibility to stop thinking about technology as anything other than a medium that makes us more creative and not less,” said Nick Law, Global Creative Chairperson, Accenture Song, during his session at GoaFest 2023.

Laying down his ‘Seven Principles of Creativity’, Law explained what he believes the advertising industry should get right over the next 10 years. The seven principles that Law discussed were - consistent principles and dynamic practices; singular vision; collaborative culture; designing yourself; loose with ideas, tight with execution; Technology being creative; Deep simplicity and Starting in the middle.

Law stressed that people should not panic over new technology but focus on mastering stuff like generative AI. “One cannot be creative without technology. I think about how I mastered generative AI. Creative people should think about how to master it and use generative AI more than non-creative people,” said Nick Law.

Here is a deep dive on his seven principles:

1. Consistent principles, dynamic practices

Every company should have dynamic practice with consistent principles. There are some things that you stand for that do not change like core principles. And then there are things that you need to respond to - different opportunities, different technology and context – that need to be changing consistently. Importantly, said Law, if you don’t have principles you will not be able to distinguish yourself. “Everytime when something new comes up there should be a way that you and only you can respond to that is why principles are so important,” he stressed

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2. Singular vision collaborative culture

“I have never been a part of the great creative exercise that did not have a really focused vision. It could be for a product, a campaign, a company. The nature of creativity is collaborative if you can’t mix and match different ways of thinking,” said Law.

Explaining further the need for collaborations, he cited the example of films. “One of the great art forms of the 20 century in which India is really good at is film. At the end of every film you see a credit roll - the contributor of a film, the single vision in the head of a director. It is an argument against consensus against inputs. You got to be sharp at the top and connect at the bottom .”

Law said that you need to reverse engineer your organisation based on what you are delivering. “The medium keeps changing and you need to keep changing according to the medium. When the best storytelling was happening on the internet, we had to bring in story tellers. We kept changing based on that, everytime we changed we had to restructure our teams, rethink how things got made. It is important because our industry sometimes forgets that you have to be a dynamic organisation to make dynamic things.”

He went on to talk about compound connections. “I will give you an example, strategy is a form of compound connection with creativity. It could be data and Analytics, analytic and strategy, strategy and creative and technology. These things have a compound connection , one thing makes the other thing better.”

If a strategist gives your creative team one brief that is not enough and if the strategist gives a brief of 500 pages then that is too much. I think there is an amount of detail that a creative person can use that has enough detail but not too much.

3. First, design yourself

The most important connection is a person to person connection, stressed Law. “This is amazing creativity and I call it a synthetic connection. It is two people that have different skill sets that are making something that individually they could not make themselves. It is really important specially when they are not connected in physical space. “

If our companies were brain and we have two hemispheres of the brain. One that has design led and one that is story telling led and then we connect them in a synthetic connection as a part of the conversation not as a part of that hands off one to the another. What is interesting is that it actually reflects the conventional thinking that the left hand brain is rational and the right hand brain is creative. That is not true if I’m being creative both hemispheres of my brain are writing up. If you are not laterising your organization by connecting ways of thinking then you have a damaged brain in your organization.

4. Loose with ideas, tight with execution

If you come up with ideas and do not execute ideas then it is no good. If you go straight to execution without dreaming then that is not good either. It is really the way of looking at the classic T shape. Connecting when you’re dreaming and going deeper when you are executing.

5. Technology is creative

We have amazing technology and amazing engineers and technical thinkers . You cannot be actually creative without a technology to take the idea out of your head and put it out in the world. When creative folk are complaining about technology they are complaining about the technology that came after they mastered the older technology - broadcast. The mistake that the industry made was separating media and technology in the late ‘80s . It created a whole class of creatives that thought they are coming up with whole or prime ideas when they, in fact looked at just the last medium that they mastered which is broadcast.

The important thing about new technology as they emerge is that creatives should work closely with new technology soon as possible.

It is our responsibility to stop thinking about technology as anything other than a medium that makes us more creative and not less.

6. Deep simplicity

Simplicity is more important than ever because we live in a complex world, our media is complicated, new formats come on, others are replaced. These formats are competing among each other. So think that the world is already complicated and our actions need to be simple.

Deep simplicity is understanding the context and the complexity of the world we live in and translating it into something simple and human.

7. Start in the middle

I think for the advertising industry it is a very important one.

Where we get our information is getting difficult, researching is difficult, video information is difficult. People spend some time on the brand experience we create, but most of the time they are on Reddit, youtube.

The most valuable Brand in the world is built on trying to make people understand their product and not try to make them feel something with some metaphor and chasing something in the hope that they might actually click on your ad.

So this is how we began to reshape our industry. Craft, clarity and concept. At Apple I spent all my time at lifestyle marketing to feel like Apple.

We need to restructure our teams so they work together. How do you create this? It is at the intersection. Our biggest sin is when we start separating things from efficiency, separating things because we get too big and we don’t connect those pieces in the way I was talking about before.