Switch

creative inspiration

By Eduardo Nieuwenhuyzen, Senior Creative Director

As a creative type, you’ve no doubt experienced the pressure to “CREATE MAGIC” in the blink of an eye. Some creatives have even begun to poke fun by saying, “just hit that ‘FM button’ (freakin’ magic) for quick results.” However, we know that the creative process is not always linear, and it isn’t a formula that should be expected to perform on command the same way each time.

In fact, the creative process is an organic and emotional experience, where even the best creatives are affected by bad days where they may fall into a rut of not knowing where to begin. What differentiates “good” from “great” creatives is how quickly they can rebound.

How do you keep the creative juices flowing?

The trick to staying as far away from complacency and dullness is to cultivate “fun” within the creative team. This doesn’t mean just afternoon ping-pong tournaments and crazy clothes contests on Casual Fridays, but real team building opportunities.

Photoshop has provided us with many parody’s where interns have taken the liberty to highlight the team in funny situations. For example, there was a parody that celebrated the last episode of The Sopranos, and another was created as a thank you for the folks at Companion Bread for taking the team on a special bakery tour.

We wanted to share more of our personal passions within the group, we took the simple concept of “SHOW & TELL”, and gave every artist the opportunity to share something they loved. Because every artist brings a unique perspective on life to their designs, it only made sense that we learned more about each other. SHOW & TELL took us from a behind the scenes VIP tour of Busch Stadium to a once in a lifetime tour with a Brewmaster in the caves at Anheuser-Busch. In honor of graffiti art, employees were encouraged to tag each other’s houses with washable spray paint. And in a somewhat more productive domestic situation, we got a lesson on simple and impactful ways to entertain guests at your home.

The SHOW & TELL concept not only promoted presentation skills and experiential connections, but also unified a group of artists through healthy competition, which in turn provoked a spark in creativity. The process itself stays true to our company’s mission: Switch engages audiences to explore fun brands by immersing them in sensory experiences. We immersed ourselves in sensory experiences, and “fun” became a personal tool for us to erase stress and other pressures. As we all know, the happier and more energetic the environment, the stronger the creative product.

Take a recent situation where we lost a piece of business. The group was demoralized and in desperate need of a pick-me-up. Thus, The Chicken Strip Challenge was born. The CSC was staged in the midst of a work day as a competition where 3 teams competed for glory in 4 simple challenges: the most difficult challenge included eating a chicken strip with 13 different condiments layered on top of each other.

Staying creative isn’t as easy as one might think, but being creative is in every single one of us. Some might be blessed more than others, but collectively, creativity is inspired by a positive state of mind.