How data can fuel creativity in media
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A talk about creativity, media and data. Including examples and practical tips. Originally a presentation/ workshop as part of a World Media Group event
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How data can fuel creativity in media
- 2. What is creativity? What is creative media? How can data be creative?
- 3. I’m full of shit
- 6. What did you hear?
- 7. Creativity = the ability to make previously unseen connections
- 10. Hard work
- 11. Curiosity
- 12. Playfulness
- 13. What 4th word connects the following words: CREAM / SKATE / WATER
- 14. What 4th word connects the following words: CREAM / SKATE / WATER ANSWER: ICE
- 15. What 4th word connects the following words: OPERA / HAND / DISH
- 16. What 4th word connects the following words: OPERA / HAND / DISH ANSWER: SOAP
- 17. What is creative media?
- 23. Who to talk to Born 1948; grew up in England Married twice, 2 children Wealthy Spend their winter holidays in the Alps Likes dogs
- 24. Who to talk to
- 25. Where to talk to them
- 26. When to talk to them
- 27. How to talk to them
- 28. How can data be creative?
- 30. DeepMind vs Lee Sedol: Move 102
- 34. Go against conventional wisdom
- 35. Inspire and fuel creativity
- 36. Thank you
Editor's Notes
- You’ve heard a lot of information already today – so I want to start with a brain reset. Here’s a beautiful short film about starlings https://vimeo.com/58291553 Presentations typically bombard you with facts and rational argument. That works the left side of your brain – the logical side – but it ignores the more creative right side. So if you want to be more creative make sure you get different parts of your brain working and create a better state of mind that encourages creativity
- I’m going to cover 3 areas today There will be stories, examples and exercises. And there will be things that you can apply to your jobs It will be interactive so be prepared to answer questions – and don’t fall asleep at the back
- Firstly I have a confession This is a personal take on creativity. This works for me – and it might work for you too – or you might just think I’m full of shit And that is ok. You might disagree with me. The important thing is to find out what works for you. What inspires you and makes you more creative
- So what is creativity? Here we go with a predictable slide with a dictionary definition of creativity on it… But I’m not going to do that. Instead we’re going to do a little exercise…
- Please don’t say anything for now. In fact please don’t make a sound. Just relax and listen. I’m going to play a sound and I want you to allow whatever images come into your mind. Play sound of sleigh bell
- What did you hear? Where were you? What did you smell? (ask a few people to share their thoughts on what they heard and pictured in their head, what came into their mind.) Interestingly I played the same sound but you all created a different world in response to that sound. There was only the sound of the bell – but people imagined Christmas and it conjured up images and connections. And that is the essence of creativity – making connections
- Creativity = making previously unseen connections We all have the ability to make connections but some people nuture and encourage that ability Inspiration and having new experiences is central to creativity as it creates the raw material for creativity – the new possibility to make connections between I’m going to talk about creativity though the lens of experiences – particularly the things that have inspired me over the last year.
- My inspiration starting point for today is a book I know there are lots of guides and sources of creativity But I don’t want to start where everyone else is starting This is a book by this guy - Rene redzepi – chef at world’s best restaurant Noma which put Danish cooking on the map and redefined what high end cooking is about His Journal – called “a work in progress” – explored creativity, what it meant to him and what fuelled it.
- The first thing to note is that Rene had a clear vision which drove him. He wanted to make Danish cooking as exciting and vibrant and a rooted in the sense of place as Italian cooking Which if you think about it is pretty hard if the place you live in covered in snow for months of the year. But that clear vision and forced restriction fuelled creativity.
- What was also phenomenal abut noma was the sheer hard work they put in. 80+ hour week trying endless combinations of things to find the perfect dish. They knew that some of what they were doing was chance…But the chance increases when you put in more time Coming up with an idea for a dish could be easy but perfecting it can be the hard part
- Do you know what this is? This is an ordinary carrot that has been in the ground for 18months After a particularly hard winter they were running out of veg and they found a farmer who ha kept carrot in the ground for longer so he had enough food for his animals. The first try at cooking it was a disaster but they then cooked it as if it were fine aged beef and created a dish that defined Noma They never would have done that if they hadn’t said what if,.. What if we cooked a carrot with as much respect as a steak. Willingness to try new things and ask questions without knowing where exactly you are heading
- If that sounds like hard work and not much fun. Don’t worry Their approach was also full of playfulness and fun. And play is a very childlike quality – here is my 4 yr old daughter pretending to be a scarf – and why not? Why can’t she be a scarf? Too often we limit our imaginations. Play helps stretch them out again and to see new possibilities and opportunities. With that in mind we are going to play around and conduct a little creativity experiment. I haven’t tried this before – so let’s hope it works…
- Here’s what is going to happen I’m going to give you 3 words - in this case Cream, skate and water And you have to find a 4th that connects them.
- In this case the answer is ice Easy right? It’s an exercise that measures creativity – your ability to find connections between apparently random things
- But to make things more interesting I’m going to split the room into half I want you guys to answer the question as you are (one half of the room) And I want you guys (the other half of the room) to answer the question holding a pen in your mouth (show people what how to hold a pen) Trust me there is a reason for this – I’l explain later…. Ok ready here we go What is the connection between opera, hand and dish
- The answer is soap Who go that right without the pencil? And who got that right with the pencil? Apparently scientists found we are more creative when we are happy – even pretending to smile. And holding a pen in your mouth makes you smile and improves creativity
- So what is creative media – and what makes it different from advertising creativity I’m going to show you 4 recent case studies and we can discuss what you think makes them creative
- (Show Guilt trip – using parents and guilt to encourage young people to use the train and come home to see their parents.) What did people think about this case? What did they think was creative in the use of media? Target audience – talking to parents to influence the behaviour of the actual target audience – young people Use of media especially social channels - Give people the communications tools to help them do the job for us – encourage young people to buy a train ticket
- (show Nazis against the Nazis - turning a nazi protest into a fundraising events for anti-Nazis What did people think about this case? What did they think was creative in the use of media? Subversion of an event – turning a terrible event into a positive cause – a fundraising event Amplification – using PR and social channels to amplify this event to increase awareness and raise money
- (show Look up - turning a poster into a real-time advert promoting BAs routes and flights across Europe) What did people think about this case? What did they think was creative in the use of media? Reinventing a medium – Posters are typically static broadcast channesl this turned them into a dynamic medium The possibilities unlocked by technology – technology allows BA to literally show people their planes and where they were flying.
- (show Mortal timeline- using youtube in an innovative way to promote safer driving) What did people think about this case? What did they think was creative in the use of media? Understand your audience – young people were voyeurs looking out for car crash videos but not thinking about their own behaviour Understand the platform you are using – they understood youtube behaviour so well that they could create and idea that took advantage of this – a message that was only revealed when fast forwarding
- So these cases showcase different aspects of creativity – and we have talked about why they are creative. But broadly when you think about these cases you can see that there are addressing 4 key fundamental questions. Who – focus on who you are talking to – for example talking to parents to reach your real audience – their young children Where – Identify where is the best place for your message to be seen – for example use a nazi rally to promote an anti-nazi message When – Identify the best time for your message – for example promote your flight routes as actual planes fly overhead How – think about how you will communicate your message – for example hide a shocking message in a platform that people are using for entertainment Lets look at these in more detail
- Firstly who should we talk to? Media people can be really lazy when thinking about who to talk to – We often resort to bland demographics or personnas. Lets consider who this person is….
- We could be describing both Prince Charles and Ozzie Osborne – quite different people… Thanks to data we can be more specific and smarter about who we really want to talk to
- Where to talk to people For those of you who might have thought context doesn’t matter I think this example of shocking placement will change your mind. So don’t uts think about the message you are communicating think about the most relevant context that that message can be seen in Where you speak to people matters as much as what you say to them
- When to talk to people Ask a comedian (or a 5yr old) what is the best way to maximise your message – and they will say timing This very political 5 year old waited until the world’s press was watching until she had a melt down infront of the Prime Minister.
- How to talk to them Finally – talk to your audience in a way that is most appropriate for them The guardian wanted to hire hire programmers – so they hide their recruitment ad in the source code of their website… the only place that programmers would be looking at
- So we conclude our whilstestop tour with a look at how data can be creative.. Will data kill creativity? Or will it fuel creativity? Let looks at some examples – and lets look at where we started with – birds flying to create beautiful shapes and patterns
- It turns out that the Seamingly random (and beautiful) behaviours we saw at the start of our talk has a pattern And the pattern and behaviour can be predicted and replicated. The birds are flying and just following simples rules – an algorithm if you like This is a model showing this emergent behaviour These simple rules create emergent behaviours and the beautiful and complex patterns we see. This simulation is remarkably similar to the birds we saw at the beginning.
- Did anyone see google deep mind playing Lee Sedol at Go? (explain what Go is if necessary) Observers of game called move 102 in the 1st game ‘beautiful’ As it when against all the conventions and history of the game and it helped win the game … the remarkable thing was the move was created by an algorithm not a human. It had used its knowledge of the game to create a move that no human would ever have thought of playing
- And finally back to the kitchen… When Noma were trying to create new flavours and experiences they experimented with pickling and preserving – in what they called their fermented kitchen. But they didn’t ust experiment randomly they did it methodically. They created hundreds of variation of drying times. Pickling concentration and cooking times to create hundreds of possibilities which they then tasted… Most of these were disgusting or no improvement on what already existed but in some cases they created completely new flavours. This produced the base materials which they then used to create new dishes – in one instance turning a carrot into a completely new dessert It was this very methodical rational approach to testing which fuelled their creativity.
- So what? – what have these examples got to do with creativity and with media creativity? I think there are 3 things to take out
- Data can help us uncover previously unseen patterns Flocking behaviour is ust the result of a few underlying rules and behaviours. Understanding these patterns helps makes sense of chaos and uncover new opporunities Coke in the USA look at weather data and consumption patterns and found that consumption peaked on snow days – when kids stayed at home and parents gave them a treat. Tis provided a perfect tactical opportunity for them to amplify their happiness platform
- We often think that conventional wisdom is build on facts and data. But sometime that data is unfounded and conventional thinking masks opportunity. Deepmind analysed Go game play and discovered that conventional thinking about the rules wasn;t right and challenging those conventions gave it the upper hand. Conventional wisdom was that Pizza sales increased when it was sunny and decreased when it rained. But when we looked at the actual data and modelled the results we found this wasn’t the case. And that conventional wisdom was wrong.
- Data can also be used as the fuel for creativity - think about Noma;s rigorous methodical approach to creating ingredients in their fermented kitchen. Whilst data didn’t create the final dish it provided the raw materials and a different starting point that led to a new dish. I don’t know how many of you know the story about the origins of the house of cards of Netflix. They looked at viewing patterns amongst their target audience and found the types of films they were interested in as well as a old british film called House of cards. They then remade this series using information about the types of films their audience enjoyed to help guide the storyline Netflix have now use this model – of using data to create inspiration for future content – to create new series
- So that’s it – I hope you enjoyed my talk and found it both interesting and of some practical use. As I said before this is my perspective. I encourage you to try some of the thoughts out for yourself, have a play and see where things lead. Thank you