The Science of Creativity

If there is one. (Sic!). Found this piece on the Wieden + Kennedy blog.

"My suspicion is that you can't process creativity. That there is no system that will make the work 'more creative'. Indeed, you could argue that, if chaos is the friend of creativity, then process is its enemy. What we do have (we hope) is a culture that is founded upon and driven by creativity. Everyone knows that they're here to do the best work of their life. Because we do good work, we attract clients who want to do more good work, which means we can continue to retain and attract talented people."

"Not that this is simple. The creative process here is a bit like giving birth. There's a very long gestation period where nothing much appears to be happening, then at the eleventh hour there's an excruciatingly painful upheaval involving stress, shouting, tears and blood. This final spasm produces something that on first sight may be a bit odd-looking but which, when we wipe the muck off and consider it closely, often proves to be uniquely beautiful."

"In conversation with Dr Scott it appeared that clients are the key influence on the quality of the work their agencies produce. Obvious conclusion, I guess. (Though it's usually the agency that gets fired for producing bad or ineffective work, not the marketing director.) Personal experience suggests that while a great client can get good work out of an OK agency, it's very hard, even for a good agency, to do good work for a bad client."

"I remember in a previous job presenting the agency's creative credentials to someone who had recently been promoted to a senior role at a current client. She asked, 'How come you do such great work for your other clients and comparatively disappointing work for us?' Let's see - the same agency, the same creative people, the same strategists, similar amounts of time and money...what's the variable here?"

"I hasten to add that, of course, there are plenty of instances where agencies manage to screw stuff up all on their own without any help from the client. And I should also point out that all of our clients at W+K are great, so if there's any of our work that you think is disappointing, then it's our own fault."

What do you think?