About the book

This time I read the book as an ordinary paper book. The book is a collection of articles or stories about aspects in creating vibrant marketing communications for the advertisers. It’s not a book from David Ogilvy, but it’s a great and inspirational book about current issues within creative industry.

How was the actual reading of the book?

The reading experience is good. And as a starting point I will recommend this book to everybody who are working or interested on adding value to his daily business. The book is divided into six parts addressing topics from advertising to future. The articles are written by 35 individuals from Creative Social Network. There are even Finns as authors.

The articles are standalone writings so that those can be easily ready without fearing missing a point if the reading is not consistent.

The main message of the book could be summarized into this sentence – ad people are facing competition from numerous disciplines, but they have a work around for every fight. But the solutions are not entirely new. And they will prevail due to new and old “tricks”.

The “tricks” could be summarized in words of Erkki Izzara – “Our job is to make people love stuff. The main tools are intuition and humor.” Or with the words of Daniele Fiandaca – “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things”. Last but not least the words of Gareth Kay – “Great communication ideas acts as a bridge between what people are interested in and care about and what you make / sell”. Sounds just like Ogilvy?

Some critics about the book. Maybe some of the stuff are obvious and tied into current trends which will vanish over time. Great many of the authors are splendid in expressing their ideas. Could there have been more co-ordination about the contents of the articles? Anyways none of these critical notions will spoil the reading experience.

What are the key learnings of the book? 

Key learnings are:

Research, research, research.

• Jake Attree and Laura Jordan Bambach have summarize their method of creativity in form of out-of-the-box-thinking.
• They suggest that you do something out of ordinary. And then research. Like read a plethora of blogs you have no interest in. And then research. Haggle a car-boot sale. And then research. Hangout with old people you may never see again and then research again.
• So find new stuff and then summarizing these findings into your database of your brains. And use these findings creatively.

Be a Hacker 

• Don’t try act like advertising people. Be a Hacker. Be efficient. Break stuff positively. And simplify things like an outlaw.

Find a lateral solution to a linear problem.

•  Now here is a key learning that cannot be operationalize easily.
• How to find lateral solutions? Basically the book is filled with tips and tricks from appointing a chief officer of innovation to the executive board of the company. Ending up to an advice of using a Mont Blanc pen and a Moleskin pad for documenting your ideas. The reader can evaluate that which of these ideas would suit to your personal way of working.
• Anyways the lateral solution for a linear problem is the magic what happens in the creative industry.

How should we change according to the book?

Brew creative results out of the hacking

What should I personally do?  

Get out of office and learn from other hackers.

Summary

Creative Social network has written great articles and these findings can be used in all industries. Especially I enjoyed that in includes thinking how the creative industry can re-invent itself. What are ways of working for truly creative people. How to lead teams of creative people. And how to develop your every day work for ideation.

The book in six words – Doing comes first, “drunk or sober”…