Has your creative spark gone out with the summer sun? Post holiday blues and the turn of the seasons may have you searching for inspiration. I asked creative thinking expert and trainer, Andy Green FCIPR, Managing Director of Green Communications, for his advice on generating creative ideas.
Here are Andy’s top tips for injecting creativity into your PR
1. Create 'idea banks'. Why reinvent the wheel? Be comfortable in re-using used material and ideas that are not fully developed, or adapt them slightly to create a new dimension. Be masters of 'creative recycling'.
2. Make you and your team creatively accountable - don't just expect creativity to hang about in the ether around you and somehow happen. Inspect what you expect by demonstrating to your team you are alert to new opportunities, new ways of doing, or challenging the established or routine.
3. Know the ultimate creativity question: Are you asking the right questions? Challenge your assumptions and explore new dimensions by stretching your questions or breaking them down into multiple questions.
4. Harness your 'incubation' - as long as it is not an excuse for procrastination. Sleeping on a problem usually brings results. Even a walk to the photocopier and back is a mini incubation break.
5. Just say 'Yes' more often.
6. Always go the extra yard. Aim higher than what is expected of you - and what you expect of yourself.
Train your brain to think outside the box
Andy will be running three CIPR creativity workshops this winter at the CIPR Public Relations Centre. Building on the success of the original Creativity in PR workshop, we’re now offering a Creative writing workshop – to help you attract reader interest and create ‘the writing explosion’!
Want to spread the creative bug around your team? If you are responsible for managing creativity at departmental or organisation level, we’re running a Creativity masterclass. Find out what you can do to develop the creative potential of your team - from providing the right environment to stimulate ideas - to effectively managing your creative and ‘non-creative’ employees.
Find out more about our creativity workshops at www.cipr.co.uk/workshops or email sarahi@cipr.co.uk.
Find out how your creative brain ranks!
Creative solutions consultancy, CREAX, have a quick creativity questionnaire on their website www.creax.com/csa. Analyse your creative side and see how you score in areas including boldness, persistence, curiosity and perspective.
