Transcript
Every single person has been creative in their job that’s right we in business this week I am back with Brooke Hill and we are talking about how to ignite or reignite your creativity in marketing. It can often feel like you’re just sort of doing The Drudge work in marketing today like tools people deliverables so we’re talking about how Brooke and her team help you to unlock the space to ReDiscover the fun. A lot of the people that I speak to in marketing I think just because you’re under so much pressure to deliver stuff all the time like there isn’t really a lot of room for like just to have actually have a good time because people like what’s the delivering what’s the revenue impact like what’s the you know we’re spending loads of money what’s happening and you’re like boring. That’s why you focus on 100% it is supposed to be fun yeah. Well exactly yeah I mean I don’t you know you you have if you have to work you might as well at least try and try and enjoy it right like that’s the whole e the whole purpose of working in the marketing industry yeah yeah yeah. I mean have you um is that something that you’re starting to talk to people about now Brook now that you know now that Wonder think is um is out there like are you seeing sort of a good response from that that approach um or how are you approaching those conversations with your play?
Yeah look it’s a really um it’s it’s been really well the lack of a bit of word wonderful um and and the whole premise about the name is this idea of carving out time for thinking um and carving out time for for Wonder um and you know um the two being separate but connected things um and you know um I think I mean I could talk about this for forever and I won’t go too much into it but um you know in terms of in business as you say too often we get so caught up in doing the doing um and you know um and and the think and the and and the strategy part of it but we’re not really carving out that time you know for Creative for Wonder and so one of the things that we’ve been doing um with our clients is offering um creative spark workshops where we’ll come in and we literally just have this toolbook toolbox of like really and I’m not just saying they’re fun because you know it sounds corporate like you know corporate fun like they’re genuinely fun. Join us and have fun for an hour exactly. You all must have fun but you know like J um and kind of silly and um you know activities that we’ll do for you know 45 minutes um and the and and the whole goal of them is just to spark curiosity spark creativity energize the room.
And like we ran one for one of our University clients um uh a couple of weeks ago and the response was amazing. I had people dming me afterwards just going I loved that oh oh did you see this book you know there’s this book that I’ve been reading to my kids which is blah blah blah you know and just conversations and and um you know energy that continued far after that conference. And we came into that um they’d spent half a day doing some pretty heavy like planning work and then they were going the team activity in the afternoon and so we came in there and energized them and and it was just like it was just it was amazing um. And so yeah so we’re we’re getting our clients to carve out this time and you know it might be also before we do say content strategy Workshop. Okay so we’ve done the we have this process see think wonder do and it’s based on this um again I won’t go into it it’s based on a a Harvard critical thinking method but you know you see the problem goal yeah. You see the problem or the goal and you and and and you identify that really clearly. You you spend the time thinking so you’re informed by you know knowledge and insight and data um and then you carve out this time for Wonder um and then you do the doing so that’s kind of B now to our approach. And again during like content say like a Content strategy planning day or a brand strategy planning day we have this Wonder time in th ere which is which is so important and yeah yeah. I it’s one of those things that was always in my head and my team’s head of something that we really wanted to do and then to see clients really thoroughly enjoy it it’s just awesome. It’s so cool yeah that sounds really cool cuz like I me I’m sure you’re the same right I’ve sat through so many of those like just Soul destroying you know planning sessions in large companies where you’re like oh just drink as many coffees as you physically can before you go in and then hope you’re going to stay awake you know the whole thing. Um and drink as many gnts when you get home just to take the edge off yeah yeah exactly yeah just come back down to your sort of usual equilibrium afterwards.
But no I think that sounds really cool cuz you like you said one of the um one of the sort of downsides of uh obviously like hybrid and remote working though is you do miss out on a lot of that like you know just hanging out and chatting in sort of random conversat ion that happens around work. And I know I know if you believe like places like Reddit that everybody hates everyone and no one ever wants to go anywhere but I actually like I feel like if you’re forced to spend eight hours a day in an office you might as well just try and have a good time and meet some other people who you like there. Um and it’s definitely something like I’ve you know struggled with a little bit because obviously working in a small team and running your own company like I don’t really most of my clients are remote now so I don’t really need to go anywhere and so I just end up annoying everyone who’s around me in the house um which is probably less good as they’re here all the time. Um be yeah look what are you um have you had anyone who’s have you had any awkward like people who haven’t enjoyed the session so far or has everyone been pretty uh pretty on board?
Look everyone’s been um yeah I mean the one that we did a couple of weeks ago it was 100 people in a room and yo u know yeah that’s cool yeah there was and and and from all different backgrounds like from Tech to it wasn’t all marketing people. You know marketing people do tend to be B like woohoo you know let’s let’s get creative whereas you know there were a lot of so yeah and look there are there are definitely people who believe that they can’t um that they’re not creative and that’s a piece of work that you know we kind of need to do at the start of the session to kind of um un well not necessarily unpick that because that could take you know that could take years of therapy. Um but was G to say to kind of set the scene that actually um everyone is creative and you know when we go back you know we we um we’ll often talk about like books we read as kids or stories that we love kids and you know it doesn’t matter. Like one one person um she said I never read she said I never read um until I was 12 like I just hated reading and then I picked up um someone gave me Stephen King’s It B well horrifyin g first book but I know she like and she’s like and I was hooked and from then on and I loved it and I and and she came alive when she was talking about Stephen King and all these books. Now I would have never picked that from this person and I would have never picked from a master as well that they never really read as a kid as well like that to me I was like oh wow. Um but a Whatever Gets you reading is completely fine um even one of the world’s most horrifying um stories I’m still terrified of clowns to this day um the bad ones for me the early days that’s it exactly. But but equally everyone can connect with that part of themselves that just love something as a kid whether it was building Lego or whether it was listening to a story. Like everybody has that within them so if you can find that place to start with um and you know and and kind of go from there um then I think everyone everyone has an openness to it and it’s about the energy that that you bring and that we bring as well tha t’s yeah that’s really cool actually because I do think um obviously we talk about this a lot just kind of you know trying to blend together the whole sales and marketing methodologies to help everyone remember that there’s actually you know people that we’re all trying to talk to on the other side of every you know campaign or strategy or whatever. But um going back to what you were saying it always makes me a bit sad when people say that they’re not creative because I feel like that’s something that just gets kind of hammered into them at some point from you know from somewhere whether it’s like you know personal life or professional life. But I know there’s there’s certainly like all those stereotypes about you know certain jobs being creative jobs and certain certain jobs not. And like you know marketing gets a lot of flack for being a bit of a fluffy subject which um I think is um relatively undue given its current state of being highly Revenue oriented in almost every industry but u m yeah it’s a bit just a bit of a shame really because I do I do feel like professional life tends to kind of beat out the yeah some of the personal stuff that you happily can bring to work.
Um totally but that’s the thing you know everybody is creative and if you look up the definition of creativity it’s like um I mean don’t quote me word for word but it it it’s basically the idea of of having two two separate ideas and and connecting them to come up with something new. Or it’s solving a problem in a different way or it you know so creativity isn’t coming up with the idea for the iPhone like you know like nobody has those ideas. But every single person has been creative in their new in their job even if that means they’ve looked at a process and came come up with a new way of um you know a new way of tackling that process that that solves the problem. Or if they’ve been in a meeting and they’ve said and everyone’s been like Banning about moaning about this problem and somebody says oh why don’t you just do this and then you know that unlocks something. Like the all of those applications are creativity at its finest. Like creativity isn’t the big glossy idea yes we have we can we can help with those and we can help unlock those but um but creativity in practice every day is actually about um you know a a million tiny tiny moments in your every day that kind of led her up to something bigger yeah yeah.
I think that’s really important to bear in mind actually because I do I do feel like this is the the slightly uh you know sort of I suppose the dangerous end of the sort of Storytelling to ourselves Spectrum where like there’s a you know as you’re saying on the one hand there’s like people who are like oh I just I don’t have any ideas I don’t know how to do anything and then on the other you’ve got people like the hero worship end of people who claim credit for like everything and like elevated to some weird almost superhuman level whereas you like just they’re not any differ ent to anyone else they’re just you know right place right time made the most noise. Like I I’m a big believer in the fact that like anyone who’s claimed to be exceptional in any ways like it’s just either through hard work or luck or both like there’s no you know there’s no like uber MCH anywhere. Like it’s just totally under % yeah. That was a reference to Nature by the way not to the Nazis just in case anyone’s getting getting confused there. Um but um I think um it was interesting again actually I was having this conversation the other day about um you know going back to your point about factchecking how mad Modern Life is. Um because someone was I can’t remember how we got on to it we’re talking about flat earthers because I was like you know something to do with having to check things online I think it was might be talking Theo. Um but I was like in the middle of some kind of loosely referenced rant was like you got to remember that like people worked out the Earth was round something like three or 4 thousand years ago with sticks and like walking in between different places so you don’t need a lot of science to like discover stuff. You just need to like to your point think if you can see far enough it looks like the Horizon is curved maybe it actually is and then that was it that was that was the thought process and then someone was like maybe maybe we could measure it and then they could if that was no more complicated than that. You’re so right it’s all so simple yeah. Sorry was semi semi relevant to the the point we’re discussing so we can always put pin everything back to Flat earthers exactly. Yeah I was like look you know if people want to believe that that’s fine but just don’t you know I don’t have a lot of time for it so whatever. Um to me just suggest that there is possibly too much free time Andor not enough to keep people engaged on a day-to-day basis if you’re buying into you know like the Terry pratchet disc World version of of the Earth.
However coming bac k to the uh the subject of handbrook I think um and just coming back to your point around you know kind of bringing different ways of thinking back into um to how we work uh with specific reference to AI tools. I think are you seeing any not I think I was going to ask you a question are you seeing any sort of really um effective or sort of um things that you guys have done that are really sort of useful from blending together the AI tools that you’ve been testing with those kinds of methodology like your Workshop or you know the sort of um the methods you’ve been deploying or are they still very separate at the moment and you’re still just trying to test the water to see how they can kind of come together into a one solution or one way of working?
Um that’s a really good question. Um and at the moment so at the moment the AI tools are sort of more at the um executional stage so it’s more in the craft like in in the actual creation of the content. Um um but in saying that though um I we we do use them um for idea generation. Um you know we we we um yeah yeah actually we we we use them how how do I explain this? It’s not like we have a um start to end um AI solution if you know what I mean. It’s about getting plugging AI in at each stage of the process. Like if you think about that see think wonder do part of the process um you know things like problem and goal definition. The most important thing you can do before any strategy is really defining you know the problem and the goal. And a lot of that um is done through the conversation with the client but also crystallizing that into like a problem statement or something. AI can be a good a a good way to bounce that off to try and you know kind of try and crystallize that and find different ways of expressing it that feel really um like you can really work with that. Um the thinking strategy you know when it comes to organiz helping to organize thinking or organize some thoughts again it’s a it’s a useful tool there and doing resea rch as you’ve mentioned with like ask wonder you know so doing the research um analyzing the data all of those sorts of things and then you’ve got the Wonder. So that’s where yeah idea generation comes in like we’ll often do um a a workshop and then Chuck it all in and then see what else chat GPT wants to add you know and it’s like awesome sometimes it comes up with um and then there’s the doing. You know so there’s the crafting of the story so yeah we kind of plug it in at different stages through um through the process.
Oh that’s was cool yeah. And I think I mean following you just reminded me actually of something else that we spoke about so I’ve seen a lot of the same thing where I think the people who seem to be using it most uh effectively just you know to your point have a good idea of they’re trying to get out of it and they not like you know there’s no sort of end to endend do everything solution at the moment. It’s just like you know sense checking fact checking sort of fixing stu ff you know bouncing ideas around all seem to be I think we I think we successfully I’m going to claim predicted all those when we when we spoke last time but um I think um what um what I found to be a bit a bit a bit I guess dangerous is going back to what you said at the start anyone who’s been trying to use it to sort of build a complete solution. Like I know there was a bit a lot of drama just after we spoke originally about you know Uni’s not being able to detect it in uh work that people were submitting schools being really concerned about it because people were just using it to spit out these complete essays but that all seems to have kind of Gone Away. Um which I think is reassuring however are you a bit disappointed that there isn’t just a you know do my job a itol available yet? Like I mean that was kind of what I Wasing for happen how disappointed just what would I I um we I love I’m I’m a bit of a nerd I love I love what we do and I love what you know and I couldn’t imagine I think that that’s the the the right partnership to have it kind of help you out um but not be a not you know type five words in and then it just does the whole thing. I mean where would be the F well yeah. I mean I don’t know maybe maybe you should be careful what I’m what I’m wishing for on that front yeah.
No I think I’m the same to be honest I don’t see I don’t really see a world where at the moment where any one tool could do all the things that we get us to do because even going back to you know where where you and I started talking like um and going way back to when I was working in like SEO more the whole you know things changed so fast that like even these kinds of models can’t respond fast enough to the amount of like developments that are happening everywhere across like the digital marketing World in particular. So based on the you know current actual hardware and current software I just don’t see how you would legally be able to build anything that would be able to respond to a ll those changes quickly enough like I think you know at least until you and I are long gone I reckon we’re pretty safe career-wise for now. That’s my the prediction from this point on was um don’t possibly don’t quote me on that but look I think um coming back back around to sort of how you were how you were talking about it being used like it sounds like you guys have got a really clear sort of use case and your leveraging these tools really effectively but um where are you seeing in your either clients or just day-to-day life people are not using it very well or are there any areas where you’re seeing like big mistakes being made still um following our last conversation and and your recent sort of work?
Yeah so uh so it’s either that it’s not being used um and I do think that that is a bit of a um a misstep not to use it at all like it’s a missed opportunity. Um or it’s being used on the wrong things. So a for example cre creation of content like AI does a pretty good job of hygiene content um you know explainers how to all of that sort of thing. So use it for that and get your hygiene content like up to scratch on your website. Um but realize that with the proliferation of hygiene content um you’ll need to stand apart so you will need to use storytelling um to you know yeah to to stand apart. You’ll need to have unique stories you’ll need to have really personal stories you’ll need to have unique perspectives which involves you know research and things like that so um so you kind of the bar is going to get higher for Content because everybody can do the hygiene stuff right? Everybody can that with the help of AI. Um so that means that you have to lift beyond that and you have to focus on the really impactful storytelling. Um and so yeah I mean that’s a slight tangent in terms of what they’re not using it for but that’s where I see if you’re trying to get AI to create that sort of thing that that’s where you’re you’re going to struggle. Like yes it can help you create it but it you know those unique personal stories have to come from your business. They have to come from you they have to come from the people that you the the customers. Um they can’t come from um they can’t come from a machine they just can’t yeah.
So you’ve got to decide and you know that’s where strategy comes in because a strategy I think a PE people can um conflate it with over complicating things but a strategy is just literally listing out what’s it for? Like and how you and and and what’s it for and um what does success look like and uh what and also defining things like what do you not use it for? You know and just giving some guard rails around it so that people aren’t just like as I said painting in the dark. So many great quotes coming out of this conversation that was Brook Hill. I have been Stuart P Turner and this was the Flow State podcast. I forgot to do that in the intro join me again in a couple of weeks for the final part of this conversation where we talk about the swing back to Brand in B2B how to really activate and bring your brand to life and why you need to know all that stuff to nail your 2025 strategy.