Dave Trott gave his lecture today at the LSE
Stealing ideas is not always necessarily wrong.
Well, not stealing exactly. More like borrowing.
While giving credit where credit is due.
Well, that’s what I tell myself.
Which is my lead-in to quoting part of the fascinating lecture I attended today at the London School of Economics.
The lecture was titled One Plus One Equals Three: A Masterclass in Creative Thinking and was given by advertising man Dave Trott, who co-founded three major ad agencies – Gold Greenlees Trott, Bainsfair Sharkey Trott and Walsh Trott Chick Smith.
He was part of the creative team behind the ads Allo Tosh, Got a Toshiba?… Holsten Pils refreshes the parts other beers can not reach… Ariston and on and on… and the Cadbury Flake ads.
I can do no better that quote his introduction to the lecture.
What I’m going to talk about is specifically creativity in advertising, but it’s creativity which works wherever you find it. Edward de Bono, the man who invented lateral thinking, said: There are a lot of people calling themselves creative who are actually mere stylists.
Real creativity isn’t what you call creativity. Real creativity isn’t in art galleries. Real creativity isn’t in design museums or copywriters or what they call creative departments. Real creativity is a function of how you do your job in a surprising manner. Real creativity looks really obvious after you see it, but you couldn’t see it coming beforehand; you couldn’t get there logically.
As Edward De Bono said: Most people can’t tell the difference between style and creativity…
What’s happened to British creativity is it’s become hypnotised by complexity. Everybody’s confusing novelty with creativity.
If it’s new – if it’s a new app, if it’s a new piece of technology, a new piece of kit, a new way of doing animation – it must be creative.
Well, no, usually it isn’t. That’s shopping, That’s fashion. That’s not creativity.
Creativity is looking at something everybody else has looked at and seeing something nobody else has seen. I saw it described as:
A talent can hit a target that everybody else can see. Genius can hit a target no-one else can see.
Dave Trott was giving the lecture to publicise his new book One Plus One Equals Three: A Masterclass in Creative Thinking.
I do not know Dave Trott.
I have not read his book.
But, on the basis of his lecture today, I suspect it is exceptional.
He also writes a blog.
There’s a lot of that about.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 