This document provides an overview of creative writing for public relations and advertising. It discusses that creativity involves making new connections between familiar elements in unusual ways. Creativity catches attention and forms new mental and emotional connections. The document gives tips for professionals such as using smaller teams, getting different perspectives, and looking at other creative works. It also discusses that creativity does not always work and can confuse or offend. Effective videos and stunts are provided as examples. Overall, the document outlines how to develop creativity through techniques like idea mapping, playing with opposites, and vivid language.

1. Writing Creatively
Writing for PR and Advertising
Fall, 2017
John Couper

2. What is professional creativity?
• Different than genius
• Easy to develop
• Make and intensify a new connection between the familiar
• Courage is essential to break new ground, defy approval
• Remember, nobody has to see it
• Creativity is most prized in persuasion
• For its strong, memorable impact

3. Understanding Creativity
• Puts two or more familiar elements in an unusual relationship
• Using the extreme (size, etc.) to dramatize
• Minimizing text to reduce critical thinking
• Emphasizing sensory experience and emotion

4. “Billboard
is drink”
New comparison
Straw suggests action
Texture suggests
ice
flavor
Logo confirms company

5. How does creativity affect us?
• Catches our attention
• Makes us create or change mental and emotional connections
• gives us something to remember and pass on
• makes us work a little harder to understand
• gives us a moment of escape

6. “Weight
Loss”
“Enter fat…
…exit thin”
Simple and clear
A second to get it
Doors are dieters
Associations
simple to do
only at WW
)

7. Creativity Tips from the Pros
• Use smaller teams
• Bring in someone with a very different perspective
• reverse team roles
• Put yourself into the audience's world
• Compete to have the most outrageous and impossible ideas
• then scale it to the simpler and more realistic
• Look at creative materials to get in the groove, spread in meeting room
• Change the furniture/working environment, reflect a child's joy

8. Creativity in Persuasion
• Positive
• Creates a new connection between two familiar things
• Highlights new aspects of the world we are ready to know
• Can increase impact of ads
• Negative
• Must connect with what we know with what we can know
• if it misses, like humor, it can confuse and annoy
• Is very difficult across cultures and even subcultures

9. “Jeans as Face”
Connects clothes and facial expression
Attention
Faces are magnetic
Fun thing to imagine
Associations
jeans looking back at us
the personality of a face

10. Effective Videos and Stunts
• https://youtu.be/TOAHBSxMBEA Gorilla selfies
• https://youtu.be/lPDK84UlBXE Ice bucket Challenge

11. Creative Attitudes
• Courage to Fail
• setting aside The Judge
• Playful exploration: known elements in a new package
• Resource: knowledge of options and life from curiosity
• Having creative connections
• Ability to move between principles and concrete details
• Understanding/empathy of others

12. Creativity doesn't always work
• Creativity doesn’t always make an ad effective
• Can be confusing
• “Vampire” ad that prevents recall
• Offensive
• Misses the familiar/new goal

13. How to be creative
• Give yourself permission to play and fail
• Start with outrageous, exaggerated, even dangerous, connections
• It’s easier to scale drama back than build it up it slowly
• Gather raw resources: observations and ideas
• Beak down observations into elements that can be combined

14. Learn to create
• Give yourself permission to “play” and “fail” and totally suspend judgement
• Always have a little notebook for observations, thoughts, ideas
• Move between the abstract and the specific
• Be ready to heavily edit
• Look at creative work, and analyze why and how it works
• Switch hats between the lunatic and the perfectionist
• Take a walk or do some other semi-mindless activity
• Constantly imagine connections between elements

15. Techniques
• Idea cloud/mindmapping
• Play with opposites
• Cross-matching lists
• Small pieces of paper or cards
• Daydream
• Always write down/sketch ideas for later use

16. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-great-web-based-mindmapping-tools-enhance-creativity/

17. How to Be Creative
• Use vivid language and images that resonates with the target audience
• Connect visuals and graphics
• Link idea to the company or product
• Use everyday, vivid, concrete words
• Make copy/art as simple as possible
• Put your first efforts aside for a time to help evaluate it
• Find the place and time of day when you are most creative

18. Activity: Ad for a Watch
• Characteristics of watch (accuracy, style, usefulness, security)
• Activities and values of consumers (go on holiday, succeed, enjoy beauty)
• Decide on the impact impact you want on your target audience
• Imagine connections and contrasts
• Imagine and intensify/exaggerate
• Visuals
• Words
• Choose two: Big Idea, Slogan, or Image/Art

19. Useful Resources
• http://adage.com/article/special-report-the-advertising-century/ad-age-
advertising-century-top-100-campaigns/140918/
• http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32763/The-10-Greatest-
Marketing-Campaigns-of-All-Time.aspx
• http://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/11-free-mind-mapping-
applications-web-services.html
• http://prexamples.com/2016/06/top-10-pr-and-marketing-stunts-and-
campaigns-of-may-2016/

20. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXD9QByG-
Y8&list=PL37C5908E5736B7E4&index=12
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ2EKswyTao&index=2&list=PL37C
5908E5736B7E4
• http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/top-tv-commercials-12121024
• http://www.businessinsider.com/17-creative-outdoor-ads-2014-6?op=1
• https://www.pinterest.com/pin/300685712592448201/
• http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/77-catchy-and-creative-slogans/