A direct marketing company had a poster at its front office which showed an illustration of a scene from a forest. A lion was watching some deer at a watering hole from behind tall grass. The caption read – ‘In the African Savannah, a gazelle wakes up to realize that he will have to beat the fastest lion to see the next sunrise while a lion wakes up to realize that he will have to beat the slowest gazelle to see the next sunrise.’
The target audience in this case is the sales staff of the organization and the message was – this market is like the jungle where only the fittest survive. Of course, it is a metaphor, but it conveyed its message in a rather interesting way and also quite effectively.
Remove the burden of orderliness
This was a typical case of a direct marketing organization telling its team members to make every effort to perform as per the company’s expectations or perish. At the workplace, every action has an objective and there are two ways to achieve it – conventionally or creatively. Because the objective involves interaction with a demanding target audience, there has to be style and substance in how the job is delivered. A study by the University of Minnesota found that people are more prone to think creatively in an untidy environment where every object appears to be out of place. One of the likely reasons for this could be that the untidy surroundings remove the burden of orderliness in an individual. Creativity requires one to unshackle his mind from the burden of boundaries, processes, systems, logic and reasoning among other virtues. There is no particular process that one needs to follow in order to get his “creative juices flowing.” He just needs to remember his priorities and objectives and try to achieve them in the most efficient and effective way. At the same time, his effort should convey the benefits of his action in an interesting if not exciting way.