A Public Relations Podcast: Smoke Signal Episode 2: The Creativity Coach

Welcome, Smoke Seagull. A podcast that takes a look at Australia's Public Relations Center. Each episode will speak to the PR practitioner to discuss the latest industry trends and issues affecting the profession. Enjoy! I'm really excited to have Andy Eklin on this episode of Smoke Signal. It's hard to define a title for Andy. I've nicknamed him the Creativity Coach and in this episode we talk all things creativity. We try to define what is creativity. We discuss how it can be learnt and we talk about tactics such as brainstorming and design thinking to help generate creative ideas for agencies and brands. I really enjoyed this discussion with Andy and I hope you do too. Today I'm joined by Andy Eklin, Andy thanks for joining Smoke Signal. Thank you, it's great to be here. So to be good to start with a bit of your background, I think you've got quite a varied background. In my office I've started calling you the Creativity Coach. So giving you that nickname. I'll take it. It'll be good to hear a little bit about yourself and your experience and what you're doing these days. Right. Well, I guess creativity coach is about as good as title to give me as anything else. I've been in working in creativity in a variety of types of positions for probably the last 20, 25 years. I originally started in PR just as an account manager and kind of worked my way up until I was heading of account. I headed up the MasterCard account at Weber Sandwick and then I moved to New York and then I became head of communications for MasterCard in New York and I did that. So I've had kind of a lot of different jobs, whether it's agency, I worked at the corporate side. I was actually Executive Director for a nonprofit. And then I think all my life kind of coalesced when I joined Berson Marstellar in the mid-eight 1990s where I was their creative director for the United States. And that's when my lifetime to turn to a whole poor creativity because I was doing literally between four to six brainstorms every single day. And so my clients ranged from everything. I mean I had one point to count up a number of industries that I worked on between clients and industries. I've worked in about 120 industries and I've had somewhere between 700 and 750 clients just in my career. So I've worked on a lot of things. And if there is one topic I like to talk about more than anything else, it's about creativity. I love creativity. I think it's virtually everything about life actually. So it's interesting to say you were thinking about creativity quite a while ago. I guess the reason I wanted to talk about creativity in this episode is in an episode one we spoke to Arun Suda-Hem from the Holmes Report. And one thing he talked about was the creativity report they just released, which looks at creativity across the PR industry. But his view was a decade ago when he started writing on public relations. Maybe creativity would come up once or twice a month whereas it was once or twice a day in ad agencies. And so he felt PR started a long way behind the eight ball. Is that a view you've had? I guess one of the first in this area around being a creative director which today seems more commonplace? Well, that's interesting. Your take on it. And it's not so that it's wrong. I think part of the thing about it is that the way that agencies are set up, which is different completely than an advertising agency. An advertising agency you have suits and creatives. And if you've watched any part of Mad Men, you see that the Don Draper running the account and then he has his creatives that do all the work. That's not how public relations is set up. It's more of that you running a piece of business you're also responsible for being creative. So for a vast majority of agencies in the way that they were set up, it was kind of put into one person. So it wasn't really a separate function. And I think part of the thing that I liked most about the opportunity of joining person when I did was that it was one of the first agencies and find it fact that probably proves me wrong. But I just remember we were one of the first agencies that had dedicated creative teams. So suddenly the account people had a creative person matched to you and their job was to act not unlike an advertising agency that they were to head up the creative process. So when I took over the creative role at Berson Overall, because I was a schoolable creative director, I had nine creative directors in four different regions and our job was to focus on delivering the best possible idea to the client. Now some agencies kind of did various things. Other ones kind of started it and then they don't do it any longer. So it's kind of come around and then it's gone back and I think a lot of it has to do with at the end of the day. I think agencies just have a different cost center than at agencies do. So it's whether or not they need a person to be creative on a full-time scale. I would have to say that just from the agencies that I work with, not just only in Australia and New Zealand, but throughout Asia, a lot of them have kind of gone back to the person that the account director is also its creative director. And I think that there are good things about that and bad things about that. Okay. I'd like to pick up on that point. But before I do, maybe we should start with a definition of creativity. I guess it seems such an intangible concept. So what makes something creative, what is creativity, how do we define creativity? And then I'll come back to that last point you've made on the difference between a creative and an account person. Well, let me just separate. Because creativity is so broad. I mean, my daughter is creative. So you kind of have to look at this in a business context because I separate artistic creativity from business creativity. Artistic creativity. And there's a common thread between them because both types are trying to express a message or a feeling about something. And an artist simply does it with different types of medium. Business does it, you know, through the delivery of messages, usually about a product or a service. You know, sometimes it's something that's more altruistic like a nonprofit organization. But a business creativity definition, which is, I think, what you're asking for. And if it's not, that's what I'm going to give you, is that creativity is, to me, the act of combining different ideas that one comes up with. And then there were there's an idea. And an idea could be a thought, a notion, a concept, a piece of information. And by combining these in an unusual type of a way, you make something that's new, unique or useful. And to do that in business, it would be taking, you know, data from, you know, a target audience or a unique insight about how a product or a service is positioned. And then you take that piece and then you merge it with some other thing. And it's usually another idea to create a new idea. That makes sense. So a lot of what, you know, I encourage people to do in creativity training is, because when you think about it, Paul, when you come up with an idea, how do you do it? It's usually that you have a problem or a goal that you have somewhere stored in your brain, right? And then some other aspect, it could be something that you see when you walk down the street. And that random thought, combined with the thought about this problem you're trying to solve, they merge together in this fluff of the electronics in your brain. And suddenly you have a new idea. And that's why, you know, a lot of times with creativity, the word that most people use, it's an aha moment. That kind of perfectly encapsulates it because, you know, you have this problem and this other thing that you don't know where it comes from, but suddenly it magically happens in your brain and some of you have a new idea. So for you, creativity is not sitting down with a blank piece of paper and coming up with something that's brand new and never been thought of before. It's combining ideas that already exist and interesting different new way. That's true. I think one of the things that always terrifies me with the clients when they say, you know, they want a brand new idea. And I think, right, you want an idea that's never been thought of entirely of Western and Eastern civilization throughout the dawn of time. You want something entirely new. And I don't say that, you know, that there's no new ideas. But when you think about it, even some of the very best ideas are nothing more than an improvement of a previous idea. I mean, you can look at an iPad. And then you can walk back its evolution of where it came from all the way back to a Motorola. So, you know, every single idea is usually an adaptation of something new and how you add a new component, whether it's a piece of technology, a design, you know, even a color, whatever it is, you kind of add a new aspect to it. And by taking an existing problem or service or product and then you add in this new something other idea, you make a new idea. And that's kind of how it works. You know, very simplest way. So, back to your point on, at person, you had an account person and you had a creativity person and you feel PR agencies generally have probably gone back to where the account person is, the creativity person. I mean, to you, can the account person be creative? Do they? need? Does the creative person, can the creative person be an account person? Do they need those separate roles? I guess that comes to the point of what makes someone creative? Is it innate in them or can it be trained and taught over time? Well, there's a couple of good points in there. Let me start with the one about can an account director be creative? Sure. Honestly, to add to your basic point, everybody can be creative. The question is how badly do you want to be creative? Because there are people based on their personality, their culture, how they were brought up, that have no interest in being creative. And you have to remember that certain cultures to be different, which is essentially what being creative is was morally wrong. It was criminally wrong. So, yeah, everybody can be. It's just a matter of whether they want to be. Whether a account director is the best person to be creative, I kind of go back and forth on that because when I was a creative director, I saw that my singular role was if I was matched with you, for example, and we were working on the ABC client. Your job was to keep the business moving forward and keep the client happy and make it profitable and all the things that a good account manager is supposed to do. My job was to protect the idea. So, whether it came up with, whether it was a formal brainstorm and informal one, the client came up with it, me molded it, however the idea came together, a brand new idea needs to be protected because we all know that you get an idea and it's so easy to whittle it down into something that's not really good anymore. It's kind of more average or generic or a yawn. So, I always protected it. And I would find now, if I had to go back to be a client leader or a account manager, that would be really tough to do because my job is money more things than just protecting the idea. So, that's kind of how I looked at it and that's kind of how we ran it. That person is that our job was to make sure that the idea, once it was born, stayed as exciting and as unique and as differentiating as possible because we were always fighting a budget, we were always fighting a, well, that's really too hard to do or boy, that's really risky. So, you know, I go back and forth, I think it takes a real special person to be able to balance those two important aspects. Now, to your point about can anybody create it, sure, but at the same point I kind of look at it like this. Let's just say, for example, that I'm the world's greatest piano teacher. If you don't want to learn how to play the piano, I can't teach it. There's no way that I can try to build the interest up because your apathy is too strong. So, for that, you know, when I get people that come into my creativity workshops, I can almost instantly tell when someone sits down based on how they sit or their aspect of the type of questions is that I think you don't want to be creative and you know something, that's okay. Being creative is not for everybody as much as it's not for everybody to be, you know, very precise with numbers or scientific. Everybody has a different personality trait that makes them unique and they like themselves because of them. For that reason, I don't really suggest that everybody should be creative. That said, you know, to your point about can you teach people, yes, there are certainly exercises, there's philosophies. You know, when I came in and I worked with your agency about teaching you, you can teach people brainstorming skills, you know, facilitation. So, yeah, to some extent you can, but I go back to the basic point, if you have to really want to be creative to really allow yourself to kind of learn the skills, whether it's a skill or a talent, I don't know. I don't know that. It really kind of depends more upon the person's attitude. I think another thing that's important to remember about this is that to be creative by the very nature of what it is, you've got to want to be different. I mean, when you think about it, no good idea that's ever been created, let's just say in our industry, in the PR industry, the very best ideas are never safe. You know, they always, you know, made somebody nervous, probably the client, that whether it was, you know, the budget or whatever it was, you really have to push and want to be different. And when you think about it, you probably know people. Their interest in being different is not at all. So, you kind of have to want to, you have to kind of want to stretch boundaries. And if you don't want to do that, I'm not sure you can be creative. But then when you think about the PR profession, it feels like, you know, creativity is just becoming more and more important. You know, even in financial services, clients are turning to us looking for creative ideas, whatever that may mean. So, don't practice it as they kind of have to push themselves in this direction, right? I mean, it feels like it's just a skill that needs to be part of your arsenal. That absolutely, I think it's as much as important to learn creativity as it is to learn negotiation skills, conflict management, people management, whatever it is. I go back and forth, again, I'm not to say that I'm not definitive, but I can see this many sides of different things, because in terms of being creative, it's most important, I think, when you're trying to win the business. Because in a new business pitch, to me, the quality of the idea is what wins it or not. Excuse me. I have never seen in all the years I've been working on pitches. I've never seen a pitch win that was great strategy and a bad idea. You know, I have more than my shareholder of experience of having pitch that was horrible strategy, but it was a brilliant idea and we won it. So, I think the quality of creativity is absolutely vital for an agency to win the business. Then I think it becomes something different because then it's a matter of sustaining it to keep the business because you know this better than anybody else. The moment that you win it, when a piece of business, there was always another agency out there that would be more than happy to be creative if you don't want to be. And so, you've been on both sides of that, the pitch where you've been the client and you've been the agency. I guess the difficulty is there's no what the client's what is creative. In terms of if I'm pitching an idea, I may think it's creative, but the client or the you know, may think it's not creative, they may think it's a stupid idea. So there's no, it's not something you can measure, right? It's a difficult, if someone's creativity is someone else's bad idea. So, I guess, how is it just the feeling you get when you're on the other side, I guess, or how do you know what is a creative and a good idea? You know something, I hate to say this, but it's going to be true. One of the things I learned when I was at Berson, that sometimes the creative director needs to show up and look like a creative director, because if you're going to have a person, as you know, with an advertising, there has to be that kind of soul who wanders in and is, I wouldn't say it's zane, but they certainly knows how to sell it. There is an undeniable passion to just thrill the client with the excitement behind the idea. So there were days where I would put on, you know, because I had earrings there, and you know, you've seen my facial hair, it was even crazier back then. I'd unleashed the creative director for clients. And the thing that I realized very quickly is that a client never looked at me and said, "That's not creative," because I had creativity in the title. When I had to go in when I was at MasterCard, when I headed up the business, and I was in my white shirt navy suit and didn't look creative, it wasn't much more different. So part of the thing I always think about creativity and I encourage this with every agency I ever talk with. If you have a really good idea, you got to sell the hell out of it. A client will never be more excited by the idea than you are, which means if you want a business, you have to sell the hell out of it. Yeah, so that passion really has to come through that you've realized this is creative. I mean, when you think about it, if you're the client, you've been sitting there. You've put out the RFP, you've tried to find the agencies, you've griefed them as best that you can, and then you're sitting there waiting on the idea to come back. You're not waiting on a strategy to come back. You're not waiting on a message house. You're not really waiting on the quality of how the pitch looks. You want the idea because that's what you need from a business perspective to move the needle on whatever that you're doing. I see agencies that go in. I've helped clients judge agencies when they come in. It's always funny. The ones that come in and sell the hell out of the strategy, but there's no idea they don't win it. Why do you think that creative idea that hook is becoming more important or is it just as important it was when you were working at person? Is it because there's a more crowded landscape. You've got more platforms than ever before, more channels, brands are just looking for that point of difference. Is that why it's becoming more important for PR? Now starting to become part of an expectation for PR to deliver versus just being an advertising lead piece. Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the type of work that clients are finding agencies for. I remember, I don't know, I'm guessing on years here, but between eight and 10 years ago, there was a big shift. Maybe it was because of 9/11 and some other things that happened in the world. A lot more of the clients who were looking for agencies for damage control to sustain their reputation, to keep issues at bay or to contextualize issues that were happening. And so there was less of a need. for, and I hate to use this because I detest this word, but it's stuntty PR. And so there was less of that that went on. And a lot of it had to do more with helping the company protect itself, whether it was its reputation, you know, make sure that people still stayed there. So I can understand, you know, that there seems to be less interest on it. But at the end of the day, I go back to this, when a client asks you for an RFP, at the end of it, they want an idea. And so the quality of the idea is what wins it. And if you don't focus on coming up with the idea, then you can very likely not win it. I don't know how many agencies I talk to, but let's just say that they have maybe two weeks to prepare the RFP, right? I mean, that even seems generous now to it. It seems like, you know, you only get a week. But still, of the week that you're two weeks that you have, I see agencies pour and spend so much time on the strategy. And then it's like, okay, now we need an idea. And it's like, well, you're not selling. I mean, I get the point of the strategy because you have to have strategy to have creativity, to have, you can't be creative without a strategy. Because otherwise, what's the point of your idea? It just seems like there should be much more of a balance between being strategic and being creative. And honestly, I don't see, as you and I have discussed, that there's no reason why you can't be the same at the same time. Separate one team off to do the strategic element of it to come up with the inside. And then another group that just starts coming up with the volume of ideas, because really when you think about it, if you wait to the last minute to find your idea, we all know that we've been in a brainstorm. You don't find it in the hour. And so, isn't it better that you kind of spend the time that you have focusing on both? Yep. So, talk to us, talk a little bit about brainstorming. It feels like creativity and brainstorming go hand in hand, or is seen as kind of a key part of creativity. But brainstorming seems something that can be done really badly as well. So, I guess what are some tips from your perspective around brainstorming, how you've seen it done well or done poorly? Well, brainstorming, I mean, the way that I ran brainstorms, and I was starting in this business, and for probably the 15 years, at the beginning of my career, it's entirely different now. I mean, we used to have formal brainstorms. They were very specific. They were set up with very provocative games and exercises. It was thought-srule. We kind of laugh because to us, we were party planners more so than brainstormers. I also just want to kind of point out that brainstorming as a whole, I think the word just gets a bad rap. I mean, you can open up any Google and say, is brainstorming bad? And you'll get hundreds of ideas and articles from people saying, "Oh no, just not doing brainstorming." I just want to clarify because brainstorming is the singular act of your brain coming up with ideas. Whether you use it in a formal way, in a conference room with friends or colleagues, you know, do it formally with a brief and whatnot is one way of doing it, but frankly, Paul, you and I have done this, we could have a brainstorm just talking it all the way together. And I think the thing that from an agency standpoint, or even a corporate client, because I get lots of clients that are just, you know, that aren't really looking for agencies, they just want to build a creative culture. I think part of the thing that my tips would be that you have to always start with what exactly are you trying to do? Because the point of an idea, whether it's good or bad, rests on the fact, does it solve your problem? Because if it doesn't solve your problem, it's a bad idea. I mean, it could be a zany, it could be sensationally, you look at it and go, "God, what'd that be fun?" But if it doesn't, you know, build sales or, you know, change your market share or, you know, retain or retract employees, it's a bad idea. So you not only have to know what your objective is, you have to know what your problem you're trying to solve. Because frankly, if you don't have a problem and you can't articulate it, well, then how the heck you can come up with an idea if you really kind of don't even know what your problem is? So it's those two things. And then I would add an a third, which kind of goes to something else that you kind of talked to you when we're talking about our notes about design thinking, is that I think that there is absolutely an emphasis more so than ever. I've seen it. That people need to talk with the audience that's going to partake or participate or engage with your idea. To brainstorm an absence of the target audience to me is a complete waste of time. My portfolio, I'm embarrassed to say this, is full of sensational ideas that me and the client and the accounting thought, oh my god, this is the greatest idea. And then when we actually presented it to a potential audience member, they would go, no, we don't like that idea. And I kind of thought then as it's been beat into me over the years, your clients are the best source of your ideas. They know exactly what they need. They know exactly what they don't. You do have to be somewhat careful when you're talking to your target audience because as Henry Ford famously said, if someone said to him back when he was making the first automobile, if I just asked my customers what they wanted, they would have just said they want a faster horse. So sometimes your audience doesn't know what they want. Steve Jobs said that with virtually any Apple product. People didn't know they wanted the iPhone or an iPad. But by talking with people and understanding what they're missing in life or what their needs or desires are or how they behave to go through whatever category that you're talking about. They are a sensational font of information about what's possible. And that's basically the core of what design thinking is. You start with the audience. You put aside what the client wants you put aside your objectives. Just listen and talk to your target audience. You observe them. You partake in their day. You put yourselves in their shoes. You do exactly what they do. And it's amazing the number of times that I've done that. And I've suspended my own bias and what I thought we should do. I have always learned something that I never would have thought about before. Always. And do you have many clients or see many agencies where you get pushed back against that approach? I mean, it's logical. But I think it's. Oh God. Yeah. And it's kind of difficult because it's a skill that does not readily come into what we think of as PR skills because. But it's at the core of PR. Right. It's the audience. Oh, totally. Yeah. But it's learning how to, well, first of all, put aside your bias. That's probably the most difficult thing for me because I don't know at all. So you just kind of think, oh, I know what you need. But then when you stop and remove your own needs from it and you just focus on. The audience. I mean, I look back at probably one of the most embarrassing programs I have ever worked on was for Clare. Oh, just be honest. In China, this was 15, 20 years ago. And the funny thing about it was that Clare wanted to launch a brand new line of hair coloring for women. And the women were like 35, 55. And they had all these sensational colors. And we did this great campaign. We did all this stuff. We had great stunts. We had all sorts of things. And then we realized after the program started, which is not a good time to have an insight, that Chinese women only only wanted one hair color and that was black. And we would have saved ourselves a lot of times if we actually just would have sat down with the women as the audience, stopped thinking, how can we sell them a product and said, what do you want? What type of things in terms of your hair care and why is hair care important to you? And I tell you, I look back at that and that taught me the biggest lesson of all. You cannot come up with an idea and absence of your audience. Just you can't, you will stumble. And I just have always thought about it a whole of the times we tried to sell Chinese women yellow hair dye. Anyway. On the brainstorming piece, I heard someone the other day say, you know, to come up with a good idea, you need a lot of ideas to start with. Is that a philosophy you will subscribe to in that you need to come up with a lot of ideas to find the needle in the haystack. So to speak, the one that's going to be the great idea. Absolutely. It's a principle that I call the 90-10 rule and that is for 90% of the ideas that you come up with in a brainstorm, 90% are going to be bad and 10% are going to be great. So that means that on average, if you just boil it down to a mathematical equation for every 10 ideas you come up with, you only have one good one. So you need at least 20 ideas to rationalize having at least two. And you always need two because the client and my experience will always look at one idea and go, oh, that's really nice. What else you got? Yeah. So you need to have volume. It's called in creativity philosophy. It's called frequency or fluency. You need a lot for context. You need a lot because you will-- the brain, the way that the brain works, the brain will dump out the most boring ideas first. I mean, when you think of every single time that you've been in a brainstorm, the best idea has not come out of the beginning. I kind of always like a brain, a human brain, to a car and winter. You can't start the car up and immediately drive on a cold engine out. You need to let it warm up, which is why icebreakers are so critical. I mean, John Cleese has a fantastic set of videos on YouTube that he talks about that the vast majority of people who are at work are in what's called the closed mindset. You are-- focused, you're narrowed down, you teap out distractions, you're trying to get things done, you're focused on duties, not only your own, but what other people try to focus on, so you're intent moving forward. The last thing you want is a new idea. What happens for a lot of agencies and a lot of everybody outside of agencies is that you have a brainstorm and these people will come in in that same mindset of being a closed mind at their desk and they bring that same mindset into the brainstorm. You've got to turn the closed mind into an open mind and that's why another reason why icebreakers are so critical is that they're one of the simplest ways to get the brain to open up again, literally and figuratively. Because if you're so focused on, oh my god, I've got to get this email out of you, this budget's due, the last thing you can do is be creative. Your brain isn't thinking that way, your brain can, but you need to teach it to do that. That's why icebreakers, that's why facilitator, that's why the location of the brainstorm, all of those things can help shift the participants, whether it's formal or you're just gathering together at a coffee shop in the lobby of your building, you need to do something to help the participants become creative. That's why I think it serves your tips. I can't strongly say enough how icebreakers are vital. You've got to have some kind of game, exercise, something just to get people to stop thinking about what is at their desk, to refocus on this and to open up the possibilities of what we could possibly do. But it's interesting, isn't it? Because I would think if you ask most practitioners, whether they're whatever level they're at, you would say, "Okay, what do I enjoy about my job?" They would probably say, "Being creative, strategy, maybe issues management." The duties as you outline that there is the stuff we have to do day in, day out. The creativity is the exciting stuff, but the way you talk about creativity there, it's hard work. One in ten ideas, ten ideas are going to be rubbish to everyone that's actually good and it takes effort and energy and a different mindset to execute on that creative piece. Oh, absolutely. I've said forever that creativity is the one time in business that you're going to get paid to be silly. So don't let that opportunity go. But at the same time, I can just turn back to you, you're running a business. How much of that business, percent-wise, do you need to come up with a new idea versus I need to implement? Implement is classic clothesmine, and there's nothing wrong with clothesmine. I don't want to suggest that working in a clothesmine is bad because it gets things done. So you kind of have to look at the fact that creativity, coming up with new ideas, things that solve a problem, things that are uniquely ways to solve your problem because really, that's what creativity is problem-solving. That's really a small part of your business. There is a school of thought, which I also think is accurate, that creativity is, as I said, it's problem-solving. So you come up with a way and I'm trying to negotiate with a client. I want to get more money for this or something else. Well, you've got to be creative when you're negotiating. You've got to come up with all the different ways. Everybody uses it. It's just that in an agency setting, it's usually specific to winning the business and then maybe there's times where in the event development of it that it really comes through, but you can certainly look at, when I teach negotiation skills, we spend a huge amount of the time talking about creativity. Because the one thing I've also learned about creativity is that it completely disappears when you're stressed. And so even more so that when you're in a negotiation setting, which is typically stressful, when you're trying to come up with another alternative, when the other party says, "No, I don't want to do that," and you have to come up with, "Well, what about this?" You need to think of all those options to negotiate in advance because you will not be able to do it when you have a nasty negotiating partner on the other side of the table. That's why I just know, I just made me say that that's why I look at creativity as so much a part of life. I mean, outside of the whole agency thing, you need creativity to help you get what you need in life because everything that you do, the vast majority of the day, is a problem that you need to solve. And your ability to come up with a number of ways to solve a problem because if you solve it the same way every single time, well, are you really getting a different viewpoint? Are you getting a little bit different outcome that you want? And if you only do it the same way, you're really living life the exact same way. However many days you're on the planet. So I see it as one of the most vital skills everybody should learn. I think it should be taught in schools. Yes, the people who say they are not creative, maybe they're good negotiators and in fact being a good negotiator, they are creative in terms of getting the outcome that they're looking for. Absolutely, but I mean, I look back at my daughter, she was at school and she came home crying and she said, "Oh my God, I didn't do very well. I was, you know, teacher said my flower didn't look like it the day'sy." And I looked at the flower and I was like, "Well, it looked like a daisy to me." I said, "What's the matter with it?" And she said, "Well, it didn't look like her daisy." And I thought, "This is creativity trading. All the teachers teaching are to replicate one thought pattern." That's not creativity, that's the exact opposite. That's due as I say. Whereas, you know, the better thing would be to do, and my sister suggested this once, that, you know, in terms of teaching kids, they shouldn't learn the alphabet in order. They should learn S. Independent of R and T, they should learn M, independent of, you know, the letters before and after it, because if they follow a wrote pattern by learning anything, they will always learn it in that system. Whereas if they learn each head letter individually, they will read faster, and you know something. She has a report that showed that that's absolutely true. So frankly, there's no reason why you can't teach creativity in schools to kids. Imagine how much different this will be if we came up with different options to solve our problems. Yeah, it feels like school almost is the opposite of that, right? It's learn, learn the answer, learn the correct answer for this certain exam or this test. And I know you've done, you know, bits of lecturing at universities as well and so of that. I feel even in university, you have PR degree, you would have issues management, you would have strategy building, you would have meeting relations, but you wouldn't have necessarily, or I haven't seen a creativity course that looks at, "Okay, how am I creative?" And it's a creativity course that says, "Okay, here's one problem. Give me 20 ways to solve it." And you know, that kind of thinking is an entirely different type. There's absolutely nothing wrong and we need kids to be able to memorize and repeat things like mathematics tables or in a variety of very specific, precise things, but that's one type of thinking. That's a very linear type of thinking. I think that we also need to focus on lateral thinking, which is why, you know, because, again, as you and I've talked about with people who are getting, you know, in front of a client, they're thrown a problem by the client. Well, the ability to think on your feet to come up with instant options is a very difficult task when you think about it. And age will do a lot, maturity will do a lot, experience will do a lot of it. But just imagine if this was much more something that was taught at school or at uni that people learned how to come up with multiple solutions to solve a problem and then make decisions on, well, really, which is the best idea overall. I think that's a whole different type of thinking. And I'm assuming your view is that best idea you can come from anywhere, right? Well, I always find it funny that when I go in for certain agencies and I love all my clients, I truly do. But, you know, I always kind of chuckle when I go into some and I, it's the same five people that come to every brainstorm. And I think there's another 20 people sitting on this floor and sometimes, sometimes, oftentimes, the idea comes from someplace you never expected. And I always think, wouldn't it be better to put up in a public spot, which is, again, what I did at Berson, we did it on all of our kitchens when somebody was having a client brainstorm, we put the problem on the wall of kitchen. And we said, here's the problem, here's what they're trying to achieve, here's the audience that's trying to go after. You know, just enough information to make person dangerous. And then we put it at the bottom. If you want to learn more or you want to participate or you want to throw out an idea, contact Andy. Why not engage everybody? I think that's also part of the thing that makes you a valuable addition as an agency to a client's, you know, partners that you have the ability to find some objectives, people to create on your behalf. That can be more better way to prove your value to a client by saying, it's not just the three people on your team. We have 28 people in the agency who are willing to think creatively on your behalf. So you've given a lot of tips already, so I'm not sure whether you've got any left for this. I guess you know me. It's hard to shut me up. If you thought about whether it's an individual, an agency, or a brand, what could they do to become more creative with tips for a kind of a little bit separately or as a group? Well, there's, I mean, there's a couple of simple things. One is when you are talking to a client or, you know, a colleague, you're just problem-solving. down the objective that you think you're doing. you want. Put that somewhere on a text to yourself or put it right down on a word document, put it on your desktop, whatever. And then at some point throughout the course in the next 24 hours, write and rewrite your goal 10 to 15 different ways. Because what happens is that you now push yourself to look at it at a different perspective. So at one point it might be, well, how do we increase people, you know, buying this person's product? And then maybe another time you go, oh gosh, how do we get Justin Bieber to buy our product? And every time that you kind of rewrite it, and the more provocative that you get, you get this entire different perspective on what could be possible. So that's one. Another one is, and I know this is something that people talk about in creativity, philosophy, but it's never really explained why. As I was saying before, ideas basically in the most simplistic way is that you have the problem somehow tucked into your conscious or unconscious brain. And then when you're walking around on a city street, you happen to just see something, you know, whether it's a billboard or, you know, a person walking by or whatever it is. And that makes you connect with the goal and you come up with a new idea. I think some of the best ideas, honestly, do you give everybody a clipboard? But let's walk around the block 20 times. Because I never know what kind of random stimulus or spark will connect in anybody's mind. And when you think about it, if all you do is do it in a conference room where there is no stimulus change, it's the exact same stuff. And in fact, it's the exact same stuff at yesterday's brainstorm. You need a variety of stimulus and sparks and thought starters to engage the brain. One of the things, I mean, I've been pressing you to do this so you know this, I think one of the best things you can do is take magazines and rip out pictures and just have a massive pile of just random completely obtuse different pictures. And the weirder of the pictures are the better. And you just have those. And as you're trying to be creative, whether you're doing it by yourself, you're doing it in the group, just start flipping through all of these random, ripped out pages. Because every single person will find something different in the picture. You know, the phrasing, thinking faster than my brain. Oh, pictures worth a thousand words. And so I've been still to understand right, but whatever. You want to have all of this kind of stimulus out there so that you don't know where your brain's going to pick up something to create that new idea. I'm very glad that the postcards, you know, that we all find in coffee shops throughout this lovely country. Yeah, they're free. I would say that 99% of them are a PR idea. They're promoting something, they're suggesting something. I have said for years that whenever your staff goes into a coffee shop, they should grab every single one of them. They should be thrown in a box somewhere in the office and that when a brainstorm starts, that box comes out and everybody gets 20 cards to instantly go through to get their mind reset. I've done it so much that I literally have eight to 10 boxes that about I would argue about 2000 cards. And I find that when somebody calls and says, can you be creative, that's the first thing I do. I'll pull out those pictures and I just start right when through them. I like it best because it's free. So it sounds like there's, I guess you often think of creativity being the right side of the brain, but it sounds like there's also there's that piece, but there's also the discipline and process side that needs to be followed as well from what you're saying in terms of, right these things down, make sure you're practicing your day in, day out and kind of have that discipline. It's absolutely a discipline. I mean, I know it's technically not a science, not science like math or chemistry, but there is a science to creativity. There is an order. There is a rigor. There are formulas. There are, you know, specific, I'd aspects of creativity, which are repeatable. So there is absolutely a philosophy that can be repeated over and over again. And you had said something earlier about how you were kind of surprised that, you know, creativity is hard. I mean, I'd be a billionaire if I could come up with a brilliant sensation idea every single time. But it's the practice of continuing to do it. It's always believing that no matter what program or problem or goal or client or situation that someone will throw at you, you have an innate positive belief and confidence that you will come up with an idea. And I think that probably has saved me more than anything else over the years is that I never believe that I go into a brainstorm that I will not be able to solve the idea because if you suddenly think that you can't come up with it, again, as Henry Ford said, you'll be absolutely correct. All right, that sounds like a good philosophy to say. It did actually didn't it. It sounds like a good way to close. I'd like to just jump into some quick Q&A, rapid-fire questions. There's just some short answers on a few, I guess, more personal topics. So if you weren't doing what you're doing now, what would you be doing? I'd be a jazz pianist. I did say that on your website. So that is actually a possibility. You actually tell it in that area. I have played the piano since I was four years old. I still practice an hour every single day. Wow. Again, that's a good discipline. I think that, you know, because you and I talked about this a long time ago, if you're going to be creative or want to be creative, you have to have a hobby that allows your brain to be creative. And whatever it is, this is whatever it is, but that's mine. Mine is playing with you. What do you like most about what you do? Oh, it's fun. Oh, it's out of the people. You meet the challenge. I mean, I would be, I'm not bored. You can't give me something because it's like a whole new thing to be curious about. So yes, no, I'd love what I do. I'll do this until I'm 2000 years old. What's one to use in piano? Fishing was made to do better. Learned to be assertive. And I think the difference is learning how to be assertive as opposed to people who think being assertive and being aggressive. They're entirely two different things. Being aggressive is I'm going to push my agenda forward and I don't care what you think. Being assertive is that I'm going to push my agenda forward, but I'm going to not bring you down to my level in doing that. So it's a matter. And I think that by learning how to be assertive, you become a better negotiator, you become a better client, you become a better client service person, you become a good colleague. But that's the one thing I always amized by people. I'm always surprised that people are, oh, I can't negotiate. Yes, again, you just need to stand up for yourself. So if you could give one piece of advice to someone starting out in PR, what would it be? I'm going to sound so fricking old. I, you know, something I will go back to this and it's something that was banged into my head at my first job as an intern at Ketchum PR in Chicago. Read the news every morning. If you do not know what's going on in the world, in particular, if you were assigned a client and they are in a particular industry or category, and you do not know what the client is experiencing, then you're not going to make it in this business. You've got to be curious about what's going on and particularly your client's business. I do not understand, I mean, I'm a geek, I realize that, but I read six papers every morning. I can't help it. I just, I like that information. Yeah, you have to have that thirst of a knowledge, right? And it seems such a logical tip that I'm sure there's many other who don't do it. And I'm not necessarily saying, you know, sit down with the New York Times or the Sydney Morning Hair Older, whatever, but I do think if you are not innately curious about how the world operates, I don't know how you would be a good communication in PR person because it is the absolute core of what we do. But that's me. And if I was to interview one other person for this podcast, who would you look forward? A specific person doesn't come to mind, although give me some time and I'll think of it. I think the one thing, because as you know, I train a lot of agencies and the one single topic that keeps coming up over and over and over is how to negotiate. It is a skill that is imminently learnable, but it is, as you know, is it not the vast majority of what you do? To learn how to get two parties to agree on something, we usually don't agree on it. To me, that is one of the biggest skills that I think if you learn and practice, it will help you tremendously, not just in this industry, but in life in general. All right, Andy, that's been great. I think I've kept you long enough. I feel like we've been able to stretch the surface of creativity and I guess you all brought an knowledge about PR and communications. Where can people find you if they want to learn more? What's the best way to reach you? Well, my website is out there. It's also my blog. It's two and one. So it's like gift with purchase, as they say at the Chanel counter. My website. So it's www.andieeclindeklund.com and pretty much everything is there. You can contact me. It's like I said, it's my blog. It's my thoughts. you actually excitedly enough about this, that I'm thinking about doing a podcast. So someday I might reverse this, and I might interview you. - Fantastic, I'm glad I've interviewed you. - Thank you, yeah, absolutely. - I would agree, there's lots on that website, so it definitely feels like you give a lot of information there around brainstorming tips and other tips for creativity. So I think I'd encourage people to go and have a look at that and I'll provide some links on the blog when I post this. So Andy, I really appreciate your time. - Oh, my pleasure. And we'll speak again soon. - Absolutely, thank you so much for this opportunity. It's been great. (upbeat music) - For this episode in the media segment, there's really only one story that we could talk about, and that's Facebook and Cambridge and Ellity Go. I wrote a blog on this earlier in the week, with this being the latest in a light of crisis hitting Facebook over the last few months. The case has shown a light on Facebook, the privacy issues for users. My blog's title was, "You're no longer the user, "you're the product." And it's interesting to see how many are starting to realize that the information they've today given away freely actually has value attributed to it. Facebook has become all-pervasive in today's society with over two billion users globally, and it reported 12 million Australians logging into Facebook every day. So it's hard to believe this crisis, or even the delete Facebook campaign that seems to continue to build momentum on social media, having a real impact on the number of users. Though this crisis interestingly has hit the bottom line with Facebook share price taking a large hit as investors start to see real downside risk as privacy issues continue to arise. Even since I wrote my blog earlier this week, the story has evolved even further. Facebook's revised the number of potential users that have been impacted by the Cambridge and the League scandal. It was originally predicted at 50 million, that's up to 87 million and counting. That includes over 300,000 Australians or one in 50 users. From this week, Facebook has started letting users know what data has been compromised, so it will be intriguing as users start to understand if their own Facebook data has been shared how they respond. So the clear question for Facebook is how do they restore the trust among users? It's also an interesting predicament for brands. Facebook has quickly become part of the PR toolkit, and for many organisations, especially smaller businesses, Facebook effectively is their main source of leads and engagement with customers and clients and prospects. Constant tickering with the algorithms, controversy around fake news, and our privacy issues facing Facebook. Make it important for brands to start thinking about how they engage with the tool, versus how they use their own channels, such as their website. So it won't only be the users that Facebook needs to build trust with, but also the businesses who have been the driving force of building Facebook from a startup just 15 years ago, to one of the largest companies in the United States. This story no doubt has many more twists and turns ahead, and it will be one that we continue to follow closely. And that is all we have time for on this episode of Smoke Signal. I hope you enjoyed our chat with the Creativity Coach Andy Eklin. I'll put some links onto the blog for further information. Do also follow us to stay up to date with the latest blogs and podcasts at SmokeSignalPodcast.com. Until next time, thank you for listening.