Where the Greatest Creative Ideas Come From

0:00From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

0:22You want to know how to create incredible creative work to create the kind of stuff that builds legacies, that reaches people on a human level, that turns brands into icons? Well, look, there's no single one way to do this. There is no single creative process that works for everyone. But here is something that I recently read that I really loved. And I'm going to read it first, and then I'm going to tell you about the author. So here it is. I tend to work. This is not me talking. This is me reading the author. I tend to work quickly because I've learned that the best ideas and solutions are almost always radically simple.

0:59The hard work that follows in building and expanding ideas is, of course, anything but simple or fast, but the core impulse driving even the most complex project should always be reducible to something that can be grasped in an instant. If something needs to be explained in complex overwrought terms, frankly, if it needs to be explained at all, it has less of a chance to succeed. Now, that is from a book called Peter Arnell Portfolio, 1980 to 2020. And who, Who, for those who do not know, is Peter Arnell? Well, here's one answer. I'm 65 years old. I've been working in commercial creative arts, photography, branding, and marketing business for about 45 years.

1:48And I would not change anything ever that I did because every single thing as an experience that I've had has led to another extraordinary moment in my life. So I'm looking forward to the next 45 years. And here's another answer. This one, a little tighter on the specifics. Arnell created the strategy and brand concept for Donna Karan New York and DKNY. He collaborated with Samsung on introducing the company as a consumer-facing brand. He designed the global identity and packaging for Pepsi. And that's just the start. There is so much more. This guy, incredibly accomplished. And if you want to understand the creative process, well, then Peter Arnell and simplicity is an excellent place to start.

2:33Today on Problem Solvers, that is what we are talking about. I am digging into the creative process with Peter Arnell to talk about how to take the most complex ideas and make them incredibly memorably simple. Coming up after the break. Here is just a short list of all the ways that we have helped people recently on a podcast called Help Wanted. Well, somebody had analysis paralysis. They had too many ideas. How do they pick the one to go with? We talked about that. How can somebody negotiate when business gets personal? No problem. Let's help. How can we figure out how much you're worth, how much you should charge for your amazing talents and products and services?

3:15Got that. Hey, let's talk about asking for money. No problem. Let's talk about corporate jobs and how to quit them and be your own boss, if that's what you want. And more. All of this and more is on Help Wanted. Help Wanted is a podcast that I co-host with Nicole Lappin, best-selling money expert, where we dig into your problems. You can write in. You can come on the show. And we can help you. You can find Help Wanted wherever you get your podcasts. Listen and prepare to have your problems solved. All right, we are back. I'm talking today about the creative process with legendary creative Peter Arnell.

3:57And to start, Peter takes us into what it's like to actually walk into a complex project, what he sees and what he understands the challenge to be. It is very difficult to be in an industry where you're engaged on an assignment to solve a problem or to utilize yourself and your team's thinking. And along that timeline to then have to pitch the very thing that you've been brought in as an authority to lead. There's a conflict there in a funny way, because I always think that if If people knew what they wanted, then why are creative companies hired? Because it seems that they might have a goal or a certain specific problem that needs to be solved.

4:53However, there's so many ways to solve a problem. And if you're very, very simple on the solution, which tends to come out of tremendous complexities that you're always battling to get to be so simple, many times people don't feel like they got their money's worth. However, if you are unpredictable, which I think the world wants, or more importantly, discover something that's interesting, different, and disruptive, it's benchmarked against what? Is it benchmarked against what the expectation is of the brief or what the client in their minds thinks it is or isn't, or should be or shouldn't be. That in and of itself is very complicated, as you see.

5:37Sure. It sounds like you're describing a difference between, and I hesitate to use the phrase the right idea, because obviously when you are trying to solve a creative problem, there is no one right idea. There are ill-structured problems and well-structured problems. I don't know if you've ever heard that, but I heard that from a writing professor once, and it really stuck with me. A well-structured problem for people who don't know is a problem for which there is one solution. Two plus two equals four. It's a well-structured problem. Then there's an ill-structured problem, which is a problem that doesn't have one solution, like write a great idea, come up with a great tagline.

6:13There isn't one answer to that. So I am going to use the phrase, the right idea, knowing that it is incorrect, but I'm going to use it just for the simplicity purposes of responding to what you just said, which is that if you're brought in to come up with a creative solution to something, there is a difference between the right idea and the idea that still solves the problem, but is also satisfying the emotional and structural needs of the client who asked you to solve the problem. And sometimes those aren't the same ideas. Is that correct? Yeah, well said. Thank you. Well said. There might not be a right idea, and I agree with you.

6:51There are probably an infinite amount of solutions. But we do recognize every day that we're, although at times CL sells as artists or creators, we're in a commercial business. Commercial businesses have time and budgets and they demand the framework and the structure to which you operate inside. So if those limits are expanded early in the brief, the client will benefit much greater from a greater selection of choice or and solutions. In my life, I never presented one idea to anybody. And I always said there isn't one idea and there isn't to your point. But there is a truth around many of what does work versus what doesn't work.

7:44And those truths are the essence of a communication device, tool, message, visual, language, whatever it is. They tend to be more powerful when they are universal and they do get close to a truth that resonates far greater in the specific of the lane that the subject is living in or the category is living in. And one could argue that the great work that's been done over the last 100 years, the big ones like just do it or think different or any of the ones that have stuck in our head that we don't even see anymore anywhere, they probably could have been used for any product, any category, any time.

8:32So that then leads me to the point of like, what is a successful solution? Well, that was exactly where I was going to go. I was thinking, you know, we've been using this language of, so there's the right idea, but of course there's no one right idea, but there's certainly wrong ideas. But anyway, there is ultimately though, I will introduce to you, there is a winning idea, which is to say the idea that got greenlit and the idea that people love. And you're right. It's funny to think about. I had never really thought about it. it's actually a wonderful thought experiment, which is that the winning idea from one brand actually could have been used for probably many other brands because it's just a really good idea.

9:10But I'd love to hear you talk about how you recognize what the winning idea is, which is to say the idea that it's going to connect, but also that is frankly just going to get past the client. Yeah, I'm so glad you finished that sentence by saying, or that's just going to get a client. So process is a big part of winning for creative people, combined with authority and experience, I think, of what does and doesn't work. Winning, if you can get it done on time and you give enough choice so the meeting is efficient and people can feel intelligent, involved, engaged, and most importantly, collaborative at the table, The job is to bring enough of those seeds to the table so that you could actually shape and kind of calibrate, puzzle together a successful, not a compromise, but a successful, holistic and inclusive best of class of all the thinking of everyone around the table.

10:15So the key to that is to know how to orchestrate that meeting. What elements are needed in that meeting, which aren't necessarily and shouldn't be, in most cases, predictable, because you have to be very thought-provoking in those meetings in order to not only demonstrate that your homework has been done and the work has been put in to achieve the assignment. We live in a world, as you know, where people in communications and creative and so forth aren't licensed professionals, so to speak. So whether you're going to have a surgery, it's pretty predictable that if you have a good surgeon, you're going to come out of the surgery and hopefully everything's going to be okay.

10:57But in our world, it's very, very fuzzy and it's very blurry. and he who could somehow get the room to see what's not there, and at the same time respectfully include from brief to conversation to collaboration to not lose the ideas, but actually make them better. I think the person on our team who does that are usually the ones who win. So the question is how do you design process? Where does it start? And who's involved so that there's a high level of predictability that takes place in that room. And everyone is kind of moving along the timeline in a way that there's no surprises in that. And at the same time, your job is to surprise, right?

11:51Because people who hire people to do things, they want original and they're asking for something they never saw. But then somehow you have to find a way to make everyone comfortable with the unpredictable or unscripted. You said twice in that great answer that a lot of it comes down to how do you structure that meeting and what do you do leading into it? And you hinted at some of the broad answers there, but I'd love to hear tactically what it is that you think and how you do go into that meeting. That sounds like a critical moment that a very underappreciated thing to master, but an incredibly important one too.

12:35I think ongoing in the process, ideas should not be held back, but rather socialized ongoing with whoever you're doing them for. And I think that you should litmus test the evolution and development and discovery throughout the process. And I don't think it's an event. I don't think discussing an idea is an event in a meeting. I think it's a daily discussion whereby the language and the space that one's creating between where you're going with it or on what you're making. That's a really fascinating answer because it undercut the very concept of the question. The question being, how do you orchestrate the meeting?

13:24The answer is you make the meeting less important because ideas have already been discussed and ideas have already been exchanged. And you've already started to calibrate both what it is that you as a creative are identifying as a nice way to take a complex problem and make it into a simple communicable solution, but also what the client is going to need and what they're reacting to. So by the time you get to the meeting, whatever the hell the meeting is, that a lot of questions have already been answered. A lot of ideas have already been developed so that by the time you're there, it's not some kind of make or break thing, but it's something more.

14:11It's the next step of a conversation. And so I love the way that you have undercut the very concept of how important that is. And I'm curious where else you go with it, but I'll just throw in one other thing that I've been curious about since you said it, that you never go in with one idea, that you make sure that you have a range of things to discuss and calibrate so that it becomes a collaborative experience? Yeah. So it starts with really good note-taking, really powerful note-taking. My desk is usually filled with my biggest problem at the end of every day is trying to like cut and piece because I write things on top of things and my notes are everything for me.

14:58And so no matter where, It's just all day long. There's just nothing. Can you hold that back up just so I can, because for people who are listening, I just wanted to describe the shape of it. So what I saw was a piece of paper with, it looked like there were a couple of different sections of it. There was a box that you had drawn with what looked like maybe a list, but then there were other parts that took different shapes. It was a real map of ideas. Yeah, exactly. So I work on graph paper. I always work on graph paper. It's probably kind of like the architect in me. and it gives me a sense of order.

15:31I tend to have many, many different places that I write notes in. And because there's so many, I have systems where there's checks, right? Oh yeah, I see. You've got a list, you've got a bunch of checks. I mean, there's urgency. Things get bracketed and things get... Right, some things are in boxes. I've seen some stars, drawn stars. Yeah, I've stopped working on doodles. Yeah. So I take all of these imperatives, which is what I think they are. If I am listening good in a meeting, then one would imagine that the person who's speaking is defining imperatives for that project. So you can take all of that and create a real mind map around where something is available from that conversation.

16:19Can you unpack that word available there? That sounds really important. I mean, you could be as dumb as saying, how far can you push the limits on something, right? You can get sophisticated and talk about, are there budgets to do what it is that you need to do in order to achieve what they want to do? Are the funds available? You can look at it as, is the person themselves in their position with the authority? You can read that to push it through to upper management or onto shareholders, right? So you're seeing what's available in the sense of what is the geography that then enables you to then leave that room and know exactly where you're playing content built inside that context.

17:02The notes are the fuel that create the idea. Without notes, they say something like you retain 3 % to 5 % of everything in an average reading. Yeah, that sounds generous. And yeah, maybe you're right. And so I pride myself in not having to retain anything, but just writing down 100 % of what's being said. We here all do that. We're like sophomores at university. We just take a lot of notes. Can I ask you something tactical about notes though? Because what you showed me, and maybe that wasn't a page of notes from a meeting or something, but what you showed me obviously was not every word that was said by somebody that would look like a long court transcript.

17:46So when you say that you're capturing 100 % of what's said, do you mean that what you're doing is when you're in a meeting, when you're hearing something from a client or whoever you're working with, that what you're trying to capture is 100 % not of what's said, but of what matters, that you're filtering for the ideas and the insights and the needs and whatever is available that matters and you're walking away with that distillation in notes? There's a lot of dialogue in a meeting, but I think distilling it down is the same bad practice of making a decision of what is or isn't important. I did literally mean taking good notes.

18:30Okay. Transcription style. I think most of the solutions live in these conversations or dialogues. I really feel You have to apply talent, imagination, and foresight into building an idea. But the seeds of that direction and hearing, to my point before about how do you get in the room, not make it an event, and bring along all of this shaping that goes on, sculpturing around a thought. You do it by having a lot of conversation and then capturing it, reflecting on it. And then it's like this nonstop treadmill of what I would refer to as institutional knowledge that is being dropped on your table or in your mind.

19:18I would call it almost collaboration therapy. I think in those environments, people are much more apt to express themselves versus agenda-centric or brief-centric discussions where people are trying to stick to the brief. When you stick to the brief, if the brief becomes the walls, the guards, the cage, that doesn't permit you to do the very thing you need to do, which is kind of break down the walls versus sticking inside a conventional, rather well-defined box that then contradicts the idea of original and different and special. and I would argue at some point the ideas should be owned collectively by both sides of the table.

20:09The representation of those ideas, big type, small type, black and white color, all that stuff, that to me is much less important than encouraging dreaming and challenging convention and looking for the easiest, simplest way to solve a problem in the most elegant fashion. Let me just ask you one final thing. You said the phrase finding the simplest solution to solving a problem. And you said that on a show called Problem Solvers, so I can't help but follow up on it. What would you say is the starting point when somebody is trying to think about how do you simplify a complex problem in communications, in looking at a way to tell a story and looking at a way to solve a perception problem and looking at a way to create something that people are going to care about.

20:59These are hard, complex things. And maybe if you're in the creative field, then you're going to start with a brief or an RFP and you're going to see a whole bunch of needs and wants and complicated things. And you have to find that simple, simple way to solve that problem. What is the first thing that you do? What sets that ball rolling towards the solution? I like your question. Thank you. Good question. I try to practice the art of letting the problem and the arsenal of issues upon me against solving that problem talk to me. I think it was the architect, Louis Kahn. Someone asked him about how he knows how to put all those bricks together.

21:46And he said, you have to let the bricks talk to you. And it really is true. It means you have to study and understand what those things are and the best way to utilize those things, to assemble those things in order for them to then flourish and start to show you that that thought you had initially could work or could grow. I always say that if you seek a beauty, you'll find it, which is not my line, but it's a powerful line. And I also think if you seek an idea, you'll find it. And so I think to me, what I mean by that is that I think ideas are around you in every square inch of your life. And if you can see a way to discipline yourself to study and look and be aware, like really aware of what's going on around you, then ideas don't necessarily have to fit or and be of that, that you're trying to solve.

22:47but you could displace rapidly, fast, the world around you to give you answers in a very, very accelerated fashion. I really believe that. It's worked for me. I mean, how does the Brooklyn Bridge in black and white become the launch pad for what was then to become one of the most famous fashion designers in the world in a period in the mid 80s where if you didn't have like big floppy hats and big oversized sunglasses and red lips and color vivid color in an ad, you were like judged on what? And here we show in the middle of the winter, a bridge at night in black and white and just put the word New York under Donna Karen.

23:34And so I think I've done that many times in my life where I just was able to take something of great power that just sat there and you don't even have to create it many times. You could just acknowledge it and then just gently move it over. It's like always going away from the obvious. And we should find the best and most potent solution along the timeline relevant to holding a mirror up to the essence of what that company's DNA is and soul is. That's quite complicated because there is an angle there. To your point before about, right? Yeah. My point about truth, there is an angle where you can turn the mirror between the culture and the DNA and the mission of the company and the public.

24:25And there is a point where they both stare at it. And if you can just angle that mirror correctly so that that reflection is seen perfectly by both, that's where you win. Peter, this has been so interesting and insightful. Thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to meet you. I write a newsletter. It's called One Thing Better. And my favorite response that people send me is where they say, you know, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and I don't open many of them, but this is the one I open every week. And I really appreciate that. And the reason I think that they're doing that is because this newsletter is designed with you in mind.

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