Creativity in B2B marketing: step one

If the light bulb is the cliché icon of the creative idea, it’s interesting to note that Edison spent 10,000 hours trying to make his light bulbs work. This is one of the take-outs of the Creativity toolkit, (Thursday 30th June) – that it’s the fear of keeping on going which often blocks us. 

This was particularly apparent when I asked B2B’s Sara Cortellazzi to try the entry assignment for the course. The challenge: Pick the 10 things you consider most creative and put them onto a power point deck. And it’s deliberately 10, not one or a couple of things, but a full double digit 10. 

“Initially, I thought it was going to be very hard, I mean ten seems so many, how am I ever going to get ten.” But once Sara got underway, it wasn’t such a big deal. 

“Once I got started there were quite a lot of things that came to mind, and it kind of got easier.” But perhaps the most revealing insight came when I asked Sara which her 10 choices she thought was the best. The answer was the last one, Smart ideas for smarter cities. While the others reflected aspects of her life as she was growing up, the last one reflected Sara’s work at B2B Marketing. It was the one where creativity was harnessed to do something really clever and useful.

Most creative people reserve the best for last. The early stuff just warms us up and gets us in the zone, but true creative professionals keep going well beyond where most others have given up. Like Edison, if you’re going to bring some creativity to your work, you have to be prepared to keep going. 

Sara’s best choice, in her opinion and mine, was the last one of the set (above).

 

Not feeling very creative? Why not trying our Creativity toolkit for B2B marketers course on 30 June 2016. 

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