It’s not a good look for America.

A six month old baby teargassed. [Source, Source]

A grandfather who is a U.S. citizen dragged out of his house in his underwear (it’s -7° here in the Twin Cities) in what is, no surprise, a false arrest. [Source, Source]

ICE agents ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant in Wilmar, MN then came back and arrested its employees. [Source, Source]

Meanwhile, it turns out nine of the 13 “worst of the worst” criminals ICE claims to have picked up during Operation Metro Surge were already in prison. Some for years. [Source]

Oh, and my Minnesotan friends — of all ethnicities — are now carrying their passports to the grocery store because, “you never know.” [Source]

This is what the Trump brand has become.

And it’s a failure.

If Trump, Noem, and ICE were contestants on “The Apprentice,” Trump would fire Trump

What we’re seeing on the streets of my hometown is federal incompetence, accompanied by unprofessional violence. What we’re hearing from those who’s positions we fund are lies and excuses. [Source]

There was a time on a brand-building TV show where those behaviors were grounds for firing.

The optics are terrible. And we’re all paying for them.

There are no editors to clean up Trump’s mess this time.

Even with access to the latest, no-doubt pricey surveillance tech [Source, Source, Source] and budget for ill-fitting Nazi cosplay costumes [Source], our federal employees continue to screw up.

And we all continue to pay for every minute of the tragedy.

Good luck taking this show to Philly.

Every leader is the encapsulation of an idea.

With Trump it seemed easy enough back on July 21, 2016.

“I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” — Donald Trump, on accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention

“I alone” works great when all we’re talking about is talk. When the brand is merely rhetoric—when you can just say your crowds were bigger, when you can say you won every election, even the ones you didn’t — you can just say you never hung out with Jeffrey Epstein. The words don’t seem to matter when all there are are words.

The words don’t matter when your brand of leadership is just a facade enraptured with the trappings, the makeup, the camera angles. When all that counts is perception.

Leadership built only on words fails when the responsibility of reality comes calling.

Renee Good was shot three times by a Jonathan Ross, a federal agent.

Last I heard, Donald Trump was the leader of the federal government.

And now the blood flows upward.

Which is why Noem, Vance, and Trump immediately sought to distance, to spin, to move themselves as far from reality as possible. “I alone” am not responsible, they assert—mere seconds after urgently insisting and demanding they alone had the authority, indeed the responsibility, to solve a perceived crisis in Minneapolis, my home town.

To those with great power and all that.

“I alone” demands its due.

The stain of responsibility sinks deep. No amount of gold-covered excuse-making can hide the bloody reality Trump, alone, carries responsibility for all of the failures in his organization that led to Good’s death.

Of course we get more bloviating, more violence delivered by the hands of the state. Every unnecessary burst of aggression by federal agents further tarnishing and contradicting the edifice Trump holds dear.

The irony smells metallic, coppery, iron-like.

“…so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves…”

If only those words were actually true.

Each of us idea people has a responsibility now that AI is here.

Good news, this responsibility is also a skill. It’s a skill you are born with, a skill you can hone. Some people have made remarkable careers with this skill.

It’s a skill that matters now that AI has begun to suggest knowledge is becoming a commodity; now that AI has enabled more people to be more capable (never mind creative) in more avenues than many imagined possible; now that leaders are expecting AI to improve efficiency and increase creative innovation among their ranks.

I should be clear. AI didn’t suddenly foist this responsibility on all of us. AI just clarified the need.

The need for taste.

Taste is a response to technology, a balance to technical capability. Once we invented paint brushes and canvases and printing presses, once we conjured stages, props and curtains and projection systems and screens, once we crafted musical instruments — the need for taste became clear.

Things got more challenging as desktop software emerged. As one of the two office manager characters put it in that Apple Macintosh TV ad: “I think the more powerful computer…is the one people want to use.” All of a sudden more people could design more things more quickly. Taste became important, especially if you wanted your work — or the output of your team or organization or brand — to stand apart, to generate additional value.

Just because the technology says you are capable doesn’t mean the work you produce will be heard or seen, will resonate, will matter to someone, will affect behavior, will be remembered. This is where and why taste becomes a necessary skill we need to understand and leverage.

I said you were born with it.

Alas, it was probably schooled out of you, too. (Seth wrote all about that here.)

And the vast majority of corporations have not welcomed taste as a skill or capability among their ranks. For a very long time taste was dicey. Taste was off-putting. Taste was opinionated, and [shudder] elitist. Taste was carefully relegated to a very few, and not discussed in polite society.

Because taste has mostly been misunderstood in the context of work. Taste isn’t some bizarre attribute harnessed only by those with fanciful eyewear, shoes and haircuts. Taste is understanding and respect — fueled by curiosity, managed by fluency in topics like brand standards, color theory, human history, behavioral economics or even grammar. Taste is pragmatic application — understanding context and circumstance, then reacting effectively. Taste is decision-making, not arbitrary guesswork or opinion. Taste takes working at it. You might get lucky the first time. It’s the 1,000th time you employ taste which requires practice and effort. By the way, taste is not making things. Taste is reacting to, and guiding the making and publishing of things.

Given the deluge of AI-generated content, we need taste more than ever.

Because AI doesn’t know six fingers on a hand is aesthetically troublesome (not just anatomically inaccurate). AI doesn’t know what color palette or design system or layout or typography or skin tone or casting or locations are tasteful when it comes to your next assignment. AI isn’t aware of your audience’s sensibilities, you are. That’s why you have taste and why it is a responsibility. Some people have taken that responsibility and developed incredible value shepherding things like magazines, museums, networks and brands towards growth and greater profitability.

We need to operationalize taste in the age of AI.

I think this begins by recognizing the machines can’t do the work for you. As enabling and profound as AI has proven to be in such short time, the technology remains inert. Someone has to instigate, to prompt. AI isn’t self-initiating, yet. Which means someone has responsibility for AI’s result. That someone ought to be able to articulate a goal or expectation. That’s where taste starts to flourish — it points towards an outcome, suggests what success can look like.

A second aspect of taste acknowledges context and audience. Where and when are we creating, and for whom? Taste means being able to articulate for whom and under what circumstances are we creating. Taste grasps boundaries. A creative brief might help you here.

And finally, in its best use, taste nurtures understanding but doesn’t demand obedience for any single opinion. It isn’t about you. Taste transcends. The trick is in sharing the benefits, welcoming a collective comprehension, instead of squirreling away some secret code. In many ways, taste is actually a collective understanding. If we’re going to be overwhelmed by AI, we’d all better get on the same page.

Let’s conclude with a solid rant from TikTok speaking to the ultimate failure of technology (algorithms) to curate tastefully, exposing the practical value of taste-makers. We actually need humans who know what they’re talking about.

And everything comes full circle.

Originally published via my newsletter

How to Get Ideas (Amazon, Goodreads) by creative director Jack Foster is reassuring yet tough, pragmatic yet philosophical — just the right blend of anecdote and acumen for those charged with shipping ideas.

I had been working in advertising for a few years when I discovered Foster’s book (first published in 1996). I was developing a Copywriting curriculum for a course at Emerson College. Alas, Luke Sullivan’s classic, Hey Whipple (Amazon, Goodreads) hadn’t been published yet. But I felt like I’d struck gold — as Foster helped illuminate the grand precept of an ideas person.

And this was really the first time I realized, hey, I am an ideas person. Not just a Copywriter, or Creative Director. To be an ideas person is to have an expanded purpose, a broad creative calling. To be an ideas person is to be deliberately so. Or as Foster puts it,

“The ones who come up with ideas know that ideas exist and knowthat they will find those ideas; the ones who don’t come up with ideas don’t know that ideas exist and don’t know that they will find ideas.”

You might be surprised how many humans fall in the second category. Or not. After all, the business of being an ideas person is psychological, political, not always reliable, festooned with anxiety, thrilling when it isn’t maddening, and too often a ridiculous way to make a living. And yet, here we are.

Foster’s book was the first of many to set me straight. To frame the business of creativity in reasonable terms, with high standards. But not just artistic standards.

“Getting an idea depends on your belief in its existence. And your belief in yourself.”

The roots of surviving, never mind thriving as an ideas person begin deep within. It’s not just a matter of confidence, or bravado, but an ability to be candid with your own perception. You need to be able to recognize your own fragility, your hesitations, the “rules” you’ve invented often without much consideration. An ideas person is often their own worst enemy.

“If you’re like most people, many times your thinking is inhibited because you unconsciously assume that a problem has restrictions and boundaries and limitations and constraints, when in fact it doesn’t.”

“Business people ask the wrong questions all the time. Many times these questions are based on assumptions so deep-seated they don’t even know they’re making them.”

Foster taught me the utility and importance of being on fire

“Do you really believe in your idea? Then why let people who haven’t thought about it and worked on it a tenth as much as you have put the kibosh on it? Attack.”

While this might appear, out of context, as strident, selfish positioning — the word “attack” probably got you — Foster is actually speaking inward, to your own motivations. Attack those doubts inside, which are much easier to produce. It’s simply too easy to fold, to abandon an insight which just needs a little more love. Being on fire is a constant challenge. But, as I wrote in a previous tribute, “Being on fire increases the likelihood those around you will catch fire, too.”

How to Get Ideas continues to burn bright even in this advanced age. The book is chock full of relevant quotes and expedient practicalities. It offers sage direction which stands the test of time.

Jack Foster lived to 84.

Born John A. Foster, he began his professional career in insurance. As his biography puts it, he was 18 years old, “when he got the idea to raffle off his weekly paycheck. Fifty cents to win $27.50. The first week he made a profit of six dollars. The next week he collected $53 for the raffle.”

Foster soon moved from Illinois to Los Angeles, joined the mailroom of Erwin Wasey Advertising, and eventually worked his way up to the role of Executive Creative Director at Foote, Cone & Belding. He was named “Creative Person of the Year” by the Los Angeles Creative Club. He taught advanced advertising courses at USC and UCLA. In addition to How to Get Ideas, Foster also published the very useful book, Ideaship: How to Get Ideas Flowing in Your Workplace (Amazon, Goodreads). Vern Burkhardt at IdeaConnection hosted a lengthy interview with Foster on the release of the second book.

Back when people like me used to tout books like Foster’s on Twitter, I shared many accolades. To the point where my phone rang and it was Jack Foster himself on the line. He couldn’t have been more charming, or grateful.

Originally published via my newsletter, Creativity+Courage.

The 2024 Cannes Lions begin today. What can we learn?

“Awards mean nothing until you are the winner,” Mr. Wolff said. “Then they become richly deserved and full of meaning.”

This timeless quote refers to the National Magazine Awards circa 2002. But it could just as easily point to the emotional characteristics of any creative competition in any era. We aspire to be acknowledged, to see our endeavors separated and lifted above all the rest. It’s very human. Occasionally motivating. Sometimes useful. And it’s definitely a business.

Late May and the month of June generally mark what is referred to, within marketing, as “award show season.” It began with the ANA’s Reggie Awards, then Creative Week (including the Art Directors Club, Type Directors Club and One Show award ceremonies, as well as the Webby Awards and Shorty Awards), followed by the U.S. Effie gala, the American Ad Federation’s ADDYs, and the D&AD Ceremony in London, then segues today into the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Heads up — your Communication Arts Advertising Annual competition entries are due June 28. And there are the ongoing entries in Lürzer’s Archive or the FWA. Never mind the competitions offered by trade pubs Digiday, Adweekand AdAge. Come fall, we welcome the Emmys, and Clios. This isn’t even counting all of the local, or B2B competitions.

There is a huge business in recognition.

I’ve worked in over a dozen ad agencies. If headcount exceeds 100 it is very common for a single full-time equivalent to devote almost an entire year coordinating award show entries. If you work for an agency network, there might be an awards entry team and bespoke process. Those patient individuals help determine the careful investment of many millions each year towards the aspiration that their agency’s work might be elevated. For reference: In 1984, a not-yet-three year old Fallon McElligott Rice invested “about $20,000” in advertising award entrance fees. For 2024, Cannes Lions reported26,753 submissions with per-entry fees from $696 to $2,869 — depending on the type of entry and deadline. The One Show reported “over 20,000” entries for 2024 with fees ranging from $400 to $1,300 per entry. You did indeed read that right — agencies around the world invested a combined low end $26 million in one year entering just two competitions.

The calculation goes like this: You select and enter your agency’s best work. You hope some of it will catch the judging zeitgeist — because winning might change fortunes — i.e. raise your agency and individual profiles, attracting more and better clients and talent. In the best case scenario, entry fees paid pale in comparison to revenues and reputations generated. Is this connection clear cut and obvious? No. The business of creativity awards is entirely subjective.

When I worked on the Volkswagen “Drivers wanted” campaign at Arnold Worldwide we won the top awards at Cannes, One Show, Clios, et al over several years. Those accolades got us into new biz pitches, helped us hire admirable talent, and nurture the fly wheel. Awards were absolutely a fuel for growth. But. The winning was never consistent — i.e. what won Gold or Best of Show in one competition might only garner a Merit in another, or not place at all in some. Discerning why any idea stands apart during any awards season is perhaps the greatest challenge of all — never mind translating and leveraging such learning into the next batch of work.

It is a business of strategic hopefulness. I spent $1500 this spring entering a campaign into several shows. I was convinced there were enough worthy elements to inspire at least a merit or mention in at least one competition. Nothing came of it. “C’est la vie,” as they mutter on the Boulevard de la Croisette. This is the nature of judges and judging, of the collective body of work entered in a given competition, of culture. Michael Wolff understood things very well.

The Agency Perspective

Assume you will lose, then ask — how can we still win? Competitions are a calculated risk. Paying fees to enter work is profit deliberately not invested in salaries, benefits, equipment, or training. What can you extract from the process that adds value, regardless of outcome? The calculation requires discernment:

1️⃣ How do we know the ideas we plan to submit are our best? This type of question raises questions about how your agency culture operates, how creative vision is validated, and how leadership communicates. Pointing in a clear direction will result in a more transparent, motivated agency. The One Club’s inaugural 2024 Insights Report is a useful place to begin this type of conversation.

2️⃣ What evidence, if any, do we have that our agency’s best work measures up to current global creative excellence? Award season suggests, at the very least, a time for conversation about insight, ideas, craft, cultural fit. It is a classroom opportunity free to all — you are a click away from viewing every single idea that won literally every creative competition ever.

Prior to investing, an agency should evaluate the quality of global creative over several recent years to gauge the worthiness of their own work in that context. It’s not about being accurate, it’s about suggesting and evaluating opinions around taste, experience and skill.

3️⃣ How can we make the 11th ad? In the year and half I spent building the portfolio which got me my first ad gig, a kind person recommended the following — an exercise any creative person should try:

• Review five awards annuals with a packet of Post-It Notes. (In this day and age you could bookmark or screengrab work.) If you see an idea you admire, mark it with a Note, i.e. It’s your turn to judge the competition
• Scan, photograph or screengrab all the work you marked with a Note
• Ask yourself, what is consistent across this body of work you’ve curated? In other words, what elements of creativity matter most to you? Give your curation, what denotes your style?
• Now narrow the pile down to just ten ideas. Your ten favorites. Put them up on the wall so you can see them every day
• The next time you’re coming up with ideas, ask yourself — are they on par with your ten favorites and the elements you admire? Have you created the 11th ad?

The Marketer Perspective

If you’re a marketer who cares about more effective persuasion, is curious how brands achieve distinction and preference, and seeks greater efficacy from your agency partners then this time of year can serve you well.

There is, of course, the age old pessimism: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Thank goodness, then, for Donald Gunn and the WARC Rankings, the Effie Index, and the IPA’s continued research into creative effectiveness. The folks at Better Briefs also have several reports you should read in the context of asking, “how can we inspire better performing creativity?” Or check out Ipsos’ 2023 report which suggests, “Award-winning ads are 29% more effective on short term sales lift potential and 11% more impactful at long-term brand building.”

Award Show season is nothing if not a direct result of this type of inquiry. But you have to talk about it, you have to engage. The useful insights don’t merely rub off and infect organizational culture all on their own.

What if you’ve got an in-house agency?

Even better.

Gather the team and evaluate the One Show’s Brand-Side/In-House category for 2023 and 2024. And enter next year. Maybe attend their Brand-Side conference in October. Then evaluate the In-House Agency Forum’s Creativity Awards. Or the ANA’s In-House Excellence Awards. Look into D&AD’s creative team training programs.

Creativity awards have this odd patina of beaches, pomp and glitz which do a profound disservice to the keen insights available from examining, debating, and celebrating effective ideas.

It is a choice to take advantage.

This piece was originally published via my free Substack newsletter Curiosity+Courage.

💡

Ideas are fragile, critical, essential things.

And they live in an unending relationship with feedback.

Two elements in a primordial dance: An idea. A reaction. A revision. A reply. Rinse and repeat.

Done well the dance is effortless, appreciated and additive. It can change the world.

How often do we do it well?

Knowing how to react to creativity, to provide feedback which enhances and nurtures ideas so its creators can act effectively on your behalf is really hard.

Companies, brands and careers stumble and fail at it.

Let’s figure out how to fix that.

First and foremost, feedback needn’t be emotional

We learned terrible habits when we were young. Emotions got linked with ideas. Self worth got tied up in ink, pixels, words, performances and creative expression. But wait — don’t we need ego and emotion to unearth brilliance? We certainly do. But the process does not require us to weld our creations to ourselves. Unless you want to become the lead character in a tragic biopic.

We are not our ideas. (And yet, we are.) The ideas are not the people who created them. (And yet, they are.) Such is the conundrum.

Learned detachment is critical for idea people.

I’m remembering an ad agency conference room early in my career. We were reviewing campaigns. The intemperate Creative Director dismissed the work of my partner and I with a gesture, then clarified, “you suck.” A finger pointed unmistakably in my direction. A senior art director interjected — surely the CD didn’t mean this personally? The work sucks, not the person? “I do mean him!” our leader exclaimed. “He sucks!” (Years earlier, my mentor, Bill Miller, had taught me a prescient lesson: The business of creativity is learning to survive rejection.)

Learned detachment is also critical for those tasked to react. They soaked up the same unfortunate lessons, and lug the same unnecessary baggage. A suggestion:

• Professionals avoid prefacing — Never begin a creative review with “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” or versions of “I know everyone put a lot of hard work into this…” Here’s the truth: You don’t have that much power or insight. No one does. Initiating a creative review with faux attempts to protect what you imagine are the emotions of others is a waste of time. Get to the work — that’s hard enough.

Thank goodness for books including Crucial Conversations, Creativity, Inc.,Thanks for the Feedback and Radical Candor which provide valuable instruction for emotional objectivity in the realm of business. Books like these map out healthy process for evaluating the emotional qualities of creativity while remaining detached from our own emotions and the emotions of those who created it.

The 10x Attitude: “What an idea can be” is 10x more valuable and efficient than “What it is”

Let’s say it’s early days in a creative journey. If you look at a headline, layout, edit, or concept and see potential you’re on the right track. If, however, you look and see mistakes — watch out, there’s a trap.

It all starts at the beginning, long before we briefed the assignment to create. Before strategy was defined. Before a business issue was identified. It starts with a mindset — do you embrace potential, or fear? It really is that simple. Carol Dweck’s “Two Mindsets” frames this challenge as Fixed vs Growth (her book is invaluable). If we set out on a path towards gaining the most advantage possible from creativity, we must assert a Growth (or “potential”) frame of mind early, and remind ourselves often.

If we seek creativity’s advantage, we must preserve “the oxygen of optimism” detailed in chapter four of Adam Morgan and Mark Barden’s A Beautiful Constraint. In early days of creative problem solving it is too easy to look literally, to not see past Photoshop comps or loosely formed attempts at expression. It’s far too easy to miss the point entirely, and therefore miss the potential. Morgan and Barden offer a solution: “CAN-IF.” When reacting to creativity in early stages, always frame input this way: “We CAN do this/make this work/embrace this concept…IF we [and here’s the hard part — now you have to think creativity to maintain enthusiasm].”

We all spent entirely too much time as children focused on a kind of accuracy that was meant to prepare us to work on a factory floor. We were trained to follow precise rules, the better to keep the factory humming. Large swaths of modern business benefit from the literal approach. But not creativity. A literal environment fails to set up or nurture success when our roles and our deliverables are to find, polish and evangelize ideas no one has seen or heard before.

Okay, I see your hand raised. Thank you for your patience. Yes, but what about accuracy and brand guidelines and craft? Excellent points, all — but for much, much, much later in the creative process. A keen, discerning eye is invaluable once we’ve entertained concepts, and focused on a singular direction. Uncapped too early in a creative process, the red pen will quite literally (and quite easily) destroy economic value.

Ideas which outperform the status quo (and become the new status quo) come from the realm of the potential, not the literal.

Everyone has taste — some just have more practice using theirs

If you find yourself in a role with creative feedback responsibilities, you’re in luck. Now you’ve got the best excuse to visit art museums, eat at new restaurants, attend concerts, subscribe to Communication Arts, and watch all those Oscar nominations. And you get to talk with others who love those subjects, too. Because part of your job description, written or implied, is to have taste.

Do a search for “good taste quotes” and you might decide taste is unnecessary, foolish, or as Edith Sitwell put it, “the worst vice ever created.” It is also a wildly efficient skill we don’t teach or evaluate enough. It’s a skill of increasing value in the age of AI.

Fortunately, you were born with taste. We all were. But it’s ridiculously easy to unlearn. Just mindlessly embrace the status quo.

In the context of business, and the task of reacting to creativity, Taste can be defined as containing:

• Experience in Art and Design 🎨 (i.e. their histories, periods, styles, the elements which define one type versus another, and perhaps most important — a point of view on what leads to cultural impact). The creative components of successful business — brand standards, cultural relevance, photography, film, writing, et al — have roots. You need to know where they come from. You don’t need a degree, just curiosity. You can’t sit on the sidelines.

Taste is also about being:

• Operational and Action-Oriented ✅ In the context of business, taste is also translation and the operationalizing of ideas. It’s about recognizing concepts don’t magically come to life in all the nooks and crannies of a corporation. Taste is the ability to inspire and educate, to bring teams along for the journey, to convey benefits of potential — despite the allure of the status quo.

We are born creative.

Which suggests we are also born with an ability to relate and react to creativity on par with origination itself.

It’s just not taught that way, or supported. But it’s there.

If we think about the practice of feedback as a creative act in itself, we’re on the right track.

Avoid leaping

We were taught how to rush to judgement. We were taught to cut corners and leap to tactics. The arc of efficiency suggests me just telling you how to solve the creative issue saves us time, gets to the point, and most important — moves us quickly away from the uncomfortable soil of humility. One of my youngest son’s doctors said, “The hardest thing for any doctor to do is nothing. We’re trained to take action.”

The ouroboros that is creativity and feedback is lopsided. All wholly magic and foggy charm juxtaposed with a muscular razor’s edge of action-oriented precision. One side comfortable in uncertainty, the other adamant we solve now. This is learned behavior.

We can unlearn it.

We can talk openly about resisting the urge to take matters into our own hands. We can talk openly about the anxiety produced by creativity which hasn’t yet landed. We can return to and interrogate the assignment itself to see if that’s where the problem really lies.

Actionable feedback doesn’t dictate, it fertilizes, it opens doors, and keeps the “oxygen of optimism” flowing. It takes practice and finesse, and desire.

Creativity is dangerous. Act wisely.

My second favorite book in the world is Robert Grudin’s The Grace of Great Things. The pulled quote on the back cover reads,

“Creativity is dangerous. We cannot open ourselves to new insight without endangering the security of prior assumptions. We cannot propose new ideas without risking disapproval and rejection. Creative achievement is the boldest initiative of mind, an adventure that takes its hero simultaneously to the rim of knowledge and the limits of propriety. Its pleasure is not the comfort of the safe harbor, but the thrill of the reaching sail.”

When a marketer asks for creativity, they are asking to leave the comfort of the safe harbor. To believe otherwise is foolish, never mind inefficient. How else do we propose to attract necessary attention? To convince customers of our benefits? In reacting to creativity we are reacting to change itself. We should not be surprised if it acts in unfamiliar ways. We got what we asked for.

So we’re back to a mindset.

In the dance which is creativity and feedback, we must re-mind ourselves of the circumstances we’ve created. We asked for the new, the persuasive, the differentiating. Our reactions to the work should be rooted in the knowledge we are actively and deliberately “endangering the security of [our own] prior assumptions.”

The economics of feedback

It sounds like a Tim Ferris anecdote, but I can’t confirm it. The myth goes like this: A professor hands out a grade below “A,” which prompts Tim to schedule a meeting to learn why. A four hour meeting. Maybe it was only an hour. But here’s the point about economics: For the professor, the “cost” of giving Tim anything less than an “A” in the future might end up being a lengthy meeting.

Economics are in everything. Especially feedback.

Orson Wells read a line of ad copy into the microphone. A disembodied voice gave a response. Wells reacted, “The right read… is the one I’m giving you.”

Legend has it the ad writer Mark Fenske once told an account executive or client, “I get my ideas from God, so don’t make me change any of them.”

If you’ve never worked in creativity all of this might sound childish and silly. Unprofessional, even. But I’ll wager those impressions miss a very important point:

Reacting to creativity HAS TO have a price, otherwise it wouldn’t be creative.

If brilliant, career-changing ideas were free for the asking, would we notice? Would they have the potency and qualities to change things? There has to be a reason so few ideas truly impact the world. I suspect one criteria is the price that must be paid to extract it.

So now what? Earlier I suggested avoiding prefacing — attempting to protect feelings ahead of (what you know will be) negative feedback. Such tactics are unproductive. Similar advice applies to the economics of feedback. The professional understands they are on a two-way street, that feedback is a conversation which will be negotiated. Barden and Morgan’s “CAN-IF” structure provides one resourceful solution. How else might you prepare yourself, your team, your collaborators to price the economics of feedback?

10,000 hours of “why” versus “how”

Feedback is the unpracticed skill which can unlock incredible creative and economic value. It starts by acknowledging this skill is challenging to learn, but you’re learning.

Avoid the leap. Ask for time to reflect.

Then be as creative in discerning an actionable insight as the work you’re reacting to. Don’t solve “how,” but ask “why?” Why do you feel uncertain? Why isn’t this idea aligning with expectations? Are your expectations off target?

Maybe the assignment is ill defined. Maybe we don’t know enough about the target audience. Maybe we’re not imagining the target audience in the most useful way. Maybe we’re trying to solve a problem marketing isn’t meant to solve.

Maybe the creative solution on the table is the right thing to do but you don’t know how to say that?

It’s okay to say, “this isn’t working.”

But it’s critical to say, “I need X amount of time to think about why so I can give you actionable feedback.”

What = “actionable?”

Actionable feedback isn’t exhaustive or exhausting. It is rarely granular. It isn’t prescriptive. It accepts a responsibility to negotiate with and inspire better creativity. It looks for what works, and amplifies those qualities. Actionable feedback accepts there likely isn’t a perfect solution, yet we can and will decide anyway. Because actionable feedback is confident enough to know this is how the process works; and it wouldn’t be creative if we weren’t a little or a lot bit uncomfortable. Actionable feedback defers to take action.

The practice of professional feedback has at least three elements. First, it is candid. Second, it clearly and concisely pinpoints the problem’s root, rather than prescribing a solution; it identifies the source of uncertainty. Lastly, it is human. Admit when you’re struggling to grasp the intent or inspiration behind the work.

You’ll figure it out soon enough.

Or your competitors will.

Originally published in two parts (one, two) in my newsletter.

Last July I partnered with Roundpeg Consulting to deliver a first State of Creativity presentation. We spoke of AI, naturally, and neuroscience, as well as “the industry of individualism” and more. So much has changed, and so quickly, since. And what good fortune — the timely Barbenheimer moment gives a colorful frame in which to evaluate many creative dualities.

Last week I gave my second annual presentation — a huge thanks to those who attended in person! Here is the entire presentation, which was originally published in three parts via my Substack newsletter.

Introduction

Since the U.S. ad industry’s birth in roughly 1704, we’ve experienced at least two seminal crossroads: the advent of broadcast (1920–40), and then the Internet 50 years later. Both revealed entirely new approaches to marketing creativity, but most importantly — these moments redrew and invented creative roles, responsibilities and authority. And here we are again, in an even faster cycle, at a third crossroads with the advent of practical AI.

And what luck to share these ideas just as Barbie and Oppenheimer manifest their impact. Two films steeped in themes of control, roles and definition. Who decides who’s “creative,” and when, or what’s “creative?” Today’s crossroads suggests optimism and empowerment, but also fear and consequence.

And I’m hard pressed to offer a more potent expression of those dualities than the recent “Compilation” spot (above) via agency Marcel for telco client Orange. Fascinating, isn’t it, how technology (and obviously some forms of AI) becomes the means of illuminating inherent bias around who’s heroic, who’s athletic, who we should celebrate. A brilliant idea.

A First Crossroad: AI

Here, in the thick of change, it’s too easy and too hard to singularly define the moment. Three examples illuminate our times…

1️⃣ Roblox CEO David Baszucki on the timeline to “speaking things into existence” (Jump to 23 minutes for the quote)

Q. “You really do think we’re going to get to that point where people are speaking things into existence?”

A. “Absolutely.”

Q. “How close are we?”

A. “We’re not five years out.” 😳

2️⃣ This demo from May when Adobe launched Generative Fill within Photoshop. I’m using this capability almost every day now.

3️⃣ And Nilay Patel’s quick review of Wix’s new AI-powered website builder

…which generated the money quote:

“The canon of c+ content is here at massive scale.”

Or as Dr. David Bray puts it, “The good news is we’re democratizing technology. The bad news is we’re democratizing technology.” I look back at ChatGPT’s arrival in November 2022 as the opening of the floodgates. Speaking again to creative roles and creative control, the limitations and constraints which once said, “you actually have to know how to draw, you have to understand typography and grid systems… you have to know how to write…” those old rules and authorities are gone. And let’s be clear, they’ve been cracking and shifting since software arrived.

And there are many reactions to those shifts, effecting how strategic and creative teams collaborate. Wharton University professor Ethan Mollick summarized it best,

“Everywhere I look I see policies put in place to eliminate the disruption and weirdness that AI brings. These policies are not going to work.”

“I have seen leaders try desperately to ensure that AI doesn’t change anything. I believe that… is futile.”

“The only bad way to react to AI is to pretend it doesn’t change anything.”

So kudos to organizations like The Coca-Cola Company who are investing in roles like a Global Head of Generative AI. It’s a potent signal. And to industry collaborations including The Partnership on AI and The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity who are advancing necessary conversations.

We need to talk about AI across our teams and organizations. In many ways, its impact may be more profound as an agent of interpersonal exchange.

But here’s the brutal truth, via Nick Law, Creative Chair of Accenture Song, speaking at this year’s Cannes Ad Fest…

If mediocrity is now free that means the bar for persuasive insights, the bar for truly brilliant creativity, is much higher. And I think that puts the advantage back in the hands of humans.

I’m reminded of my old jazz professor Rick VanMatre. He taught me curiosity was a muscle to be trained and strengthened. “Do you want to be that player who plays the same licks night after night? Do you want to be in a band with that person, who isn’t trying to improve themselves — who isn’t helping elevate your craft?”

That’s the AI crossroads. Merely using the AI tool isn’t enough…in fact, we’re going to be overwhelmed with C+ content. If our clients, our brands want to generate lasting value, we’re going to have to put in quite a bit of effort to stand apart.

Part 2

I’m older than I look.

Which is to say, I remember meeting artists who built print publication mechanicals by hand — they cut typography with razor blades. There were at least six of them in a room at Martin/Williams in Minneapolis in the early summer of 1992. And when I returned from an internship at Mad Dogs & Englishman in NYC later that same summer, that mechanical artists room at M/W was empty and another room was filled with Macintosh computers and young art directors coaching older art directors how to import fonts.

The business of creativity ebbs and flows.

I remain convinced AI will be the dominant force (the first crossroad) woven throughout all facets of the business and the artistry of advertising and marketing now and in the near future. (In fact, we talked about a lot of this with host Chris Farrell on Minnesota Public Radio this morning.) But there are other crossroads we should acknowledge.

The Internet changed everything. But the element I think we misjudged at the beginning, and didn’t give enough credence was inter-action; i.e. the notion a response might have just as much weight and value as the message which instigated it. We’d spent hundreds of years normalizing a one-way system: Advertisers say something and audiences consume it. The end. If you have an opinion, please write or call the 800 number.

Then came social.

It’s been well over a decade since. Time enough for user experience and technology to become engrained, maybe even seamless. For habits to form. Expectations set. Career paths delineated. I distinctly remember seeing some of the very first job postings with the words “social media” in the title. I helped write a few. Now those two words dominate many agencies.

Today 150 million Americans are apparently are on TikTok. Never mind every other social platform. And the hardware powering smartphones and the software enabling experiences and creation are leaps beyond where we started. What’s possible today is a miracle compared to 2005.

Or as Benedict Evans framed it in his 2023 presentation:

An individual with a social media presence attracts more attention on YouTube than many traditionally produced shows on Netflix. The old models sure seem a lot less valid.

Second Crossroads: The gravitational center of creativity has shifted to social

Advertising and marketing creativity have been premised on a network TV and cable model which is no longer useful. How we measure and define audience, how we strategize insights and connection, how we explain concepts (i.e. storyboarding), how we staff, how we allocate resources, how we brief assignments — are out of date. The writers and actors strikes in Hollywood hint at elements of this disconnect.

I can’t recall the last time I turned on a TV.

Yes, I watch the news, and ads. But via social (for this Gen Xer that’s Threads, TikTok and YouTube). FYI, Ashley in Denver is my lifeline to the ad world these days.

Put another way: How many views on social might be equal to a One Show Silver Pencil? Or Gold? What if the industry of creative recognition shifted from the votes of an experienced panel to re-posts on TikTok?

I’m beginning to sound like Gary V. But I do believe there’s an industry tension, and it’s playing out across the generations running brands and agencies in terms of strategies, investment, success criteria and creative focus. How long do we maintain a traditional, familiar broadcast mindset when the entire world seems to have gone social?

Clearly I’m jaded in assuming work like Hilton’s Ten Minute TikTok, or Maybelline New York’s Long Lash ad (the backstory is telling: two clients + one CG artist… no agency!), or the entire McDonald’s Happy Birthday Grimace “Purple Goo” escapade (here’s a super cut, and my favorite Gen X response to same) suggest a seismic shift.

But the times, they are a changin’.

Part 3

This final creative crossroads is evergreen, and spans every medium. In short: Can you come up with an idea that transforms how we perceive our world?

A third crossroads: Spectacle

The Sphere in Vegas, and any Meow Wolf installation clearly fit the bill. You can’t un-experience them. They stick with you long after, provoking reassessment. And yes, of course, these two examples require significant budget, large teams, long timeframes, and perspectives.

On the other hand we all remember ideas which were spectacular in their time and way, that never leave us. Or never leave me…

Ben Folds Chat Roulette Piano Improv

Charlie the Unicorn

The Subservient Chicken

…we each have our own bookmarks.

And I’m hopeful what emerges from developers’ investment in spatial computing (and AR in general) might also create similar reactions.

Unlike AI, which is and will be the permeating crossroad, or social which I think has become a significant, unavoidable creative crossroad, spectacle is absolutely optional. It has easy allure, but also serious requirements.

It’s not spectacle without significant risk

Spectacle is a dare.

Spectacle is rare.

Spectacle is, after all, attempting to transform how we perceive our world.

There can be too much spectacle.

With that in mind, I’m going to wrap up this series of observations on the State of Creativity by asserting two contrasting, but equal, organizing theories.

Little “c” and big “C” creativity serve as conversation starters; ways of enabling teams to set expectations and allocate resources. This work we’re about to begin… should we frame it within the confines of industrial creativity or the stereotype of artistic creativity?

1️⃣ In my mind, little “c” creativity is very, very predictable. There’s the old 80/10/20 marketing framework, where the 80% represents certainty — towards effort and allocation you know will return on investment. This is the realm of performance/direct marketing.

Which means 2️⃣ little “c” creative will absolutely benefit from generative AI because it’s largely predicated on known patterns. As we’ve witnessed, so much of the current, useful magic of generative AI is its ability to understand and build upon patterns. 3️⃣ Which means we can leverage AI to test, iterate and optimize to unearth more effective patterns, and continuously improve creative experiences.

4️⃣ Last but not least, little “c” — or industrial — creative helps include more people in creative expression that’s relevant, and on brand. I’m convinced the pandemic inaugurated more in-house, and remote team creativity. What AI and social platforms like Vimeo, or within Adobe’s suite, enable are “rules bound” creative expression. Imagine never having to worry about correct font or logo usage, brand color or image use accuracy, never mind image our audio licensing. Most employees are not art school graduates or even aware of the merits of design systems. Today’s industrial creative platforms ensure that’s not a problem.

If our goal is not to astonish, or overwhelm — but to inform, to guide, to assist, to nurture — then defining our work within little “c” definitions helps everyone stay on track, remain aligned, and focused on unsurprising outcomes.

By contrast…

There is a sentiment expressed in advertising circles which suggests “any” assignment can become spectacular. That banner ad, that sales sheet, that bit of SEO — just work all weekend to reframe strategy, budgets and expectations — and you will transform the world.

Maybe?

I’ve seen that reframing work a few times. Seems to boil down to relationships more than ideas. But let’s not forget the contrast.

1️⃣ Big “C” work will be unexpected, revolutionary, and full of pitfalls. Most people won’t like those circumstances. But here’s where we might leverage AI to research and reduce uncertainty, or social to test and confirm our assumptions.

2️⃣ Obviously big “C” creative is largely about spectacle. But, let’s be clear, this has more to do with intent than budget. Spectacle is an attitude more than a price tag. Meow Wolf delivers a lot of impact, for a much lower investment than the Sphere. And it all starts with intent.

3️⃣ In the grand scheme of things, big “C” creative likely starts very small, with ab appeal to the most passionate audiences. Again, this is where AI can help discern insights, and social can help reveal the weirdos who welcome distinct, fresh leaps.

And finally, 4️⃣ where little “c” is about managing and fueling creative consistency and creative craft, big “C” work isn’t familiar, because it’s opening unseen or locked doors, it’s trying to spark illumination where none existed before. And if we know, upfront, big “C” is our path, our objective — we can better manage expectations for the creativity which results.

Of course there could be many more creative crossroads.

And those above will evolve.

The point is ask yourself: “How do I know where I am in the current churn of ideas and culture?” And how might you respond as a result?

Given the urgency and influence of AI…

Now would absolutely be a productive time to discuss the significance of creativity, never mind the significance of the work and impact each of us aspires to deliver.

AI is here — and it’s already come for the kind of work I do every day. And yet, I suit up and show up because I see plenty of opportunities. Thriving in this new world begs important questions:

Does creativity — especially the work we create individually — still matter?

How does the value of “work” transform, if humans aren’t doing it?

How might we balance the benefits of technology and industrialization with their unavoidable threats?

Each of us has our own ways of solving life’s riddles. I tend to read, then occasionally annotate and scribble in the margins. Seth Godin’s latest, The Song of Significance, provides a deep and nourishing well of useful perspective. This book arrives right in this moment, and asks us to consider fundamental questions related to purpose, culture and the results we choose to be a part of. It’s only 187 pages long, yet packs a punch.

Can we industrialize creativity?

Back in September 2014 Godin published Stop Stealing Dreams, a manifesto I consider the roots of his latest effort. His central question then: “What is school for?” suggested it was time to rethink public education. (TL;DR — Seth’s bot summarizes: “According to Seth, this system is outdated and fundamentally flawed, as it frequently serves to crush creativity and innovation rather than nurturing them. Our schools often force-feed a standardized curriculum and measure success through a narrow definition.”)

Much of our current AI circumstance seems an inevitable progression in that long history of rules-following. Show up on time and do what the boss tells you. Except now maybe the boss is an algorithm, and you use a large language model instead of a paint brush.

Song of Significance asks us to wrestle with our centuries-long addiction to the assumed certainty, murky guarantees and perceived singularity of industrial culture.

Oof. Part of your brain just rebelled.

Quickly — this book does not besmirch or deny the greatness of our foundations. This book isn’t asking anyone to smash the gates around standardization, scale, or uniformity; all of which remain useful. As Godin puts it, “There will always be jobs (and organizations) that do work that can only be accomplished via management and top-down compliance. They’re not going to go away.”

What the book does ask is for us to accept and explore the necessity of an alternative approach. Godin continues, “But we shouldn’t pretend that all jobs need to be this way, nor should we encourage people to take an industrial job believing that it will serve their soul.”

If we’re going to thrive in the age of AI, we need to recognize we’re making a different choice. About how we accomplish work that matters. About the systems we support to fuel our work. About the rules, expectations, and habits we need to take advantage of a fresh reality.

The first choice is to distinguish between entrenched industrial management and the significance of leadership.

1️⃣ Management isn’t Leadership, and vice versa — the difference is “a feeling of control”

“The manager seeks compliance,” writes Godin. “The leader seeks to create the conditions for people to make a change happen.” The book spends a lot of time distilling important contrasts between managing and leading; with fear playing the litmus.

“Management is the hard work of getting people who work for you to do what they did yesterday, but faster and cheaper.” And that hard work is often rooted in fear. Do what you’re told or lose your job. Our shares will decline if we don’t maintain the status quo. While leaders seeking significance embrace and counter their team’s fears.

“Industrial managers tell us to be HERE, precisely where they say and when they say it. Here doing this work, this predictable, measurable, specific work.

But leaders seek to help us get over there. It might not work, it might not be precisely what we expected, but that’s where we’re going.”

The central thesis is “giving up the feeling of control.” Industrial management isn’t wiser or more prescient. It just benefits from a learned, familiar preference by teams which fear a perceived loss of control more than anything. Better to be certain and wrong than uncertain. We’ve all been in that meeting.

As AI unlocks knowledge management, we’re going to see an intriguing tension emerge, especially within orgs which prize “the feeling of control.” Or as Godin puts it,

“There’s a huge difference between the backward-looking work of quality improvement and the forward-looking dance of making decisions about what happens next.”

2️⃣ Tension is a positive sign you’re seeking significance

No one wants to be found incorrect.

No one wants the boss to call us out for uncertainty.

“Fail fast” are words on a poster, not a quality celebrated in performance reviews.

Within industrial-minded organizations, tension is a negative indicator. And those seeking hierarchy and a feeling of control leverage that negativity. But wait. “Tension is not the same as stress.”

Organizations seeking significance can’t live without some amount of tension.

“Tension always accompanies change, and change is the hallmark of significance. Tension is good. It’s a sign we’re onto something. Tension is a tool. We can use it to make change happen.”

Godin isn’t alone in espousing the benefits of tension. From Ed Catmull’s Creativity Inc., to Kim Scott’s Radical Candor, from Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit to Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick, and woven throughout Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art we learn how tension indicates useful potential. Those of us seeking significance welcome the uncertain, we recognize tension opens a door — regardless of what’s on the other side. “Valuable contributors aren’t consistently right, they’re consistently contributing,” writes Godin.

When we notice tension, we’re wise to name the accompanying fear. It might just be a very large, yet unimportant, shadow. After all, “you can’t walk on a rope unless it’s tight.” Godin reminds us:

“Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s the willingness to do things that are so important they’re worth doing even (especially) when we’re feeling the fear.”

3️⃣ What if productivity = creativity and humanity?

One of the myths of industrial culture is productivity. The image of the factory, the clock, the assigned desk, the check-in, the status meeting, timesheets, the dashboard, the stand up scrum — all try very hard to suggest we’re accomplishing something.

I was assigned a “return to work” campaign in 2021 for an organization which had achieved historic milestones in productivity the previous year while a significant percentage of employees worked from home. So, return to what? Had we not been working? 🙄 But we come by it honestly, don’t we — this desire for familiar, unquestioned, binary attributes which define how we work with one another?

Godin asks us to consider, “Just because something is easy to measure doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Or that it matters.”

This book asks us to re-evaluate what it means to be productive.

Especially, and again, in this newfound age of AI. We are gaining exponential perspective and capability. Should we constrain these advantages in the containers of industrial behavior? Or can there be a worthwhile alternative? “The work of significance embraces the very things that industrialism seeks to stamp out.”

“Significance is inconvenient.”

Which is exactly why it’s worth pursuing. Significance is the harder work we can embrace now that we’ve systematized and automated the work we could. The inconvenience is only an industrial mindset. Godin asks us to (re)consider the tools and advantage at our disposal as the means to utilize tension, to lead versus manage.

How might we measure productivity through a lens of significance?

• Document creative potential — as evidenced by the risks we took, and the insights we shared to make our teams stronger
• Celebrate transparency — by “mak[ing] promises openly and consistently — and then keep[ing] them”
• Invest in dignity — as measured by our efforts to understand and to be understood

(More of the same on pages 96, 97, 118, 142, 163–165 in the hardcover edition.)

I had the good fortune to spend a few minutes with Seth Godin right before he keynoted the 2009 Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association’s annual Summit. (For those keeping score, this was the year we invented Lil’ Seth to help hype the actual Seth’s appearance.) You could sense the melody taking shape even then. Along with Linchpin (2010), This Is Marketing (2018) and The Practice (2020), Song of Significance articulates a clear choice available to all. Here’s hoping more will take up the call.

“When we embrace the mutual commitments of significance, we embrace the conditions for a shared understanding that our work, our actual work, is to dance with the fear. And dancing with fear requires significance, tension and the belief that we’re doing something that matters.”

This post was initially published through my newsletter. If it resonates, I hope you’ll subscribe.

I am not a Grateful Dead fan.

But I am a history nerd, and a student of convergence. What might Newton have been listening to, if anything, under that apple tree? What might have mesmerized Stephanie Kwolek in 1965 before she figured out the chemical bath which created kevlar? Or in the case of advertising creativity, what inspired Scott Burns to select an Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr aficionado as the the hero of a milk commercial? (Jon Steel’s book doesn’t say.)

The mood around us as we create is often everything.

So the notion of listening to an over-four-hour-long podcast about the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” had a kind of painful appeal. But first: the writer and podcaster Andrew Hickey is a phenomenal talent. He seems the type to read all the relevant material about an artist — truly, all of it — as well as news and culture from the song’s time period to discern what influenced the moment, then cross-references everything, reads even more, cross references all that, then figures out how to synthesize a story of the song in question during its unique period; and make listening utterly worthwhile. His archeology of “Tomorrow Never Knows” by The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” gave me confidence I might endure and appreciate a song by the Grateful Dead.

Just out of college I worked with a guy who routinely took five weeks of vacation to travel alongside the Dead’s tours. This made zero sense to me. Yet this same guy gave me a piece of advice I still follow: The value of a job isn’t the money you earn, it’s what you’ll learn as a result of the situation, collaboration, the what-have-you. “If you’re not learning, you’re not earning.” Put that in your pipe, kids.

I’ve never been to a Grateful Dead show, never bought a record. When Jerry Garcia died in 1995, our Volkswagen team generated a “crying microbus” ad to commemorate his legacy but I didn’t understand his impact. Not even John Mayer seems capable of drawing me closer to the ethos.

But this podcast certainly did.

And or maybe it’s the moment we’re in right now.

I think there’s some odd synchronicity in listening to a story about California music and culture in the mid 1960s — the episode includes the nascent and definitely related computer technology scene in its narrative — at a time now when the long-explored realm of Artificial Intelligence and newer concepts like spatial computing are front page news.

Here’s the money quote from Hickey:

“It was Grateful Dead fans who were first online and who shaped the culture of the internet, good and bad, in ways that we’re still seeing today. It may not be an exaggeration to say the Grateful Dead have had a more lasting and greater cultural impact than The Beatles, despite not even having a thousandth of their fan base or their specifically musical influence.

The whole Californian ideology in all its self contradictory complexity, is, in many ways, an outgrowth of Dead Head ideology for better and for worse.

If it had been fans of Frank Zappa or The Velvet Underground who had been working in Stanford’s AI lab, rather than the Dead, the world would be unrecognizable now.”

A device like Apple’s Vision Pro isn’t the work of an individual, it’s the result of a crowd referencing its chaotic history. The tune we’re singing might sound new but the contradictory harmonies and rhythms have been around a long time — freedom and control, rote perfectionism and wild improvisation.

So I’m drawn to the “critique on the sort of society we are building,” which Ben Thompson describes in his cogent analysis of the Vision Pro. Designed by Apple in California is a long and twisting path with lots of dead ends and heroic moments. Or as Steven Levy puts it, “The mission of each of those computing shifts was to lower the barrier for interacting with the powerful digital world, making it less awkward to take advantage of what computers had to offer. This came at a cost. Besides being intuitive by design, the natural gestures we use when we’re not computing are free. But it’s expensive to make the computer as easy to navigate and as vivid as the natural world.”

Just as it was expensive to shape a musical venture that didn’t fit the AM, mono, 3-minute singles culture of the early 1960s. The podcast returns to a telling refrain: the Dead kept building more elaborate sound and lighting systems and playing longer shows in bigger venues — because they kept playing bigger venues with longer shows and more gear. The ouroboros was real.

And maybe that’s where spatial computing is at this moment. As Don Hon aptly notes (italics mine for emphasis), “As things stand, I think spatial computing née virtual reality or augmented reality, or whichever attempt at ‘owning the space’ a corporation has put its stamp on, looks super dystopic right now for information workers/knowledge workers [sic] is that all information work is still broadly document-centric, which means windows of things that still broadly look like bits of paper.”

The creative challenge today seems largely to escape the forms we’ve been in almost forever. Which will take a lot more than one company and one product to achieve. But who knows, maybe we’ve begun another long strange trip?

This piece first appeared in my newsletter; subscribe if you like.

Like many, I watched Apple’s WWDC event live.

That last sentence is both hilarious and fascinating. Yet, I can’t think of another brand who’s developer press conference I could stomach watching.

Takeaway #1: Apple knows how to invest in a kind of storytelling which makes UX, interface design, tech specs and strategy broadly compelling. The journey through operating systems, new hardware, and product refinements which led to the Vision Pro reveal was persuasive — give or take the few staged gimmicks. I believe the sequencing was critical. The Vision Pro made a lot more sense in the context of layers of Apple design continuity, and proven technical expertise.

Takeaway #2: Swinging for the fences was the only way to go. By using language like, “welcome to the era of spatial computing,” and “it’s the first Apple product you look through, and not at,” Apple gives itself and its community permission to see the product for what it can become, versus what it merely is at the moment.

Takeaway #3: It will take a village. Debuting a new way to think about computing in front of developers was necessary. Looking back, there were clues — earlier moments yesterday hammered home the stability, longevity, and interoperability of Apple’s approach to hardware and software. The only guest in the entire video aside from Disney’s CEO Bob Iger was a coder, speaking Japanese! The message was clear: We’ve opened a new kitchen, built on our proven approach…so who wants to cook up new things?

Now we need a new kind of creative brief

I’m thinking about the pivot from print and broadcast in the mid 1990s to include interactive ideas — and not long after, the pivot to include social and mobile. I remember writing job descriptions, coaching HR and Operations leaders (never mind creative leaders) to comprehend and enable new approaches to creativity, media and the expression of information.

• We collectively invented and elevated the click
• We collectively invented and elevated the Call To Action as an interaction
• We collectively invented and elevated site navigation, keywords, and thumbnail images

We worked together — all of us — to write and learn a new language. We prototyped and failed, but learned and succeeded as a global community leveraging an entirely new way to communicate. We are more or less in a similar moment with “spatial computing.” (I would have loved being a fly on the wall during the “do we use the established term — augmented reality — or manifest our own?” debate inside Apple.)

Now we get to imagine how eye movement tracking, as one amazing example, might enable the audience’s ability to engage in our ideas. This single means of interaction is going to require an entire world of iconography, visual rules, education and training consensus. Eye movement as interaction mechanism is a world begging for novel ideas, and use cases upon which to build agreements. Who’s it for? What’s it for?

Then combine this facility with hand gestures. The gestures piece was the hidden star of the show in my opinion. I’ve got a Quest 2 gathering dust over in the corner, in no small part due to the device requiring my hands to engage with hardware. Unlocking gestures will be huge. Again, under what set of rules, codecs and agreements? The foundations of this new means of interaction will be written by those advancing new ideas. We tested so many weird ways of interacting with information in the early years of Flash, bouncing ideas off a global community of creatives. It’s important to remember there are no rules in this space and time, just potential…and responsibility.

What will you and I do with it?

We get to invent a whole new way to compute.

If you ever watch an avalanche, note how the instigating moment is rarely clear. Oh, once the snow has gathered momentum the avalanche is obvious. But what combination of pressure, gravity, humidity and gravity triggered the obvious? That’s the liminal space we’re in right now.

Time to get to work.

Thanks for the push, Apple.

[This piece was published first via my newsletter where I write about creativity. Click here if you want to subscribe.]