My title is Creative Director. But really I’m a Problem Solver.

It’s what I love about this business. And while I am, without a doubt, an idea person, over the years I’ve found that my neurons also fire on all cylinders when it comes to strategy. Helping teams find the human truth that leads to the razor-sharp strategy that leads to an un-ignorable creative solution that solves the business problem. For me, it’s a puzzle. And I really, really love puzzles.

Some things go hand in hand. Rainy days and a book. Guac and Tajín. Also: creative and strategy.

Strategic creative and creative strategy are the things that make work great and build strong brands. I’ve assembled just some of my favorite quotes on this subject, all from people way smarter than me. 

From "Find the Poets,"
by Tom Elia, VP, CD at COLLINS.

As a rule, corporate buzzwords rarely speak to — let alone stir — the humanity in any of us.

Enter poetry, language’s attempt to capture the essence of an experience. At its best — from Angelou to Yeats — you realize that what you’ve just read is how you’ve always felt, you just never had words to describe it before.

  • …The same goal should apply to writing for a brand. The language we owe the people who see our work can’t be made by rejiggering stock phrases. Instead, we have to surface the truth that’s been buried and forgotten inside those stock phrases poetically — with words that are fresh, meaningful, and insightful.

    It reminds me of the old quote, “If you want to know what’s going on in a city, find the poets.” These days I like to paraphrase it as, “If you want to find new ways to talk about what’s going on in an industry, find the poets.”

    That’s why I turned to that David Whyte poem to fix my script. It’s why I find it helpful to read new poets, old poets, famous poets, forgotten poets, good poets — and, yes, even a few bad poets. To be clear, I’m not setting out to write a “poem” with a rhyme scheme or in couplets; rather, I’m hoping to open my ears to new forms of expressing a truth, which, I believe, is what every client wants for their brand.

 

From “Strategy Is Your Words,”
by Mark Pollard:

Here’s how to get good at strategy: words. Start with words, continue with words, and finish with words. You have one job - get good at words. At some point, everything is words. If you can see it, it’s words. If you can think it, it’s words. If you can feel it, it’s words.

You live in a world of your own making and you use words to sustain it because you see the world through the words you’ve used to create it.

  • …Like everyone else, you choose the meaning of these words because their meaning keeps your world’s meaning alive. Words are your world’s life support. However, a word you use everyday means something else to someone else somewhere else because that’s how that someone keeps their world alive.

    Yes, words make worlds but words can do much more - words can do anything. A novel’s words can take us into someone else’s life. Two words can seal a promise. Words can start and end marriages, deals, and wars. One word can forever follow a newborn. A magic word can help a child get what she needs. Final words can give peace to a life as it ends.

    You can use words as maps, torches, and breadcrumbs. You can use words as fireworks, tickles, and peace. You can locate yourself with words, stand a career on words, and expose ideas good and bad with words.

    If your words can, you can.