WAVELENGTHS

THOUGHTS ON CREATIVITY FROM A LOCALIZATION PERSPECTIVE

In the following series of articles Alpha Creative’s team explore all things creative

from the history of the term, to how collateral needs to be creatively adapted for independent and interdependent cultures to reach success. We also look at how brands can personalize their offerings for each new locale, and talk to the team to find out about their creative inspirations.

Ultimately, AI will speed up production and generate more creative options, allowing the copywriter and creative designer more time to edit the AI output and intentionally introduce error if they’re too bland or too perfect to be credible. As most of our snap decisions are emotionally led, the illogical and the imperfect will always have a significant role to play.

Creativity and the creative industries are now at a significant crossroads. Generative AI is now being used to create unique and engaging content. We can even alter our prompts and adjust an AI model’s parameters to include well–known copywriting techniques such as the AIDA Framework (which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action).

Looking forward, AI in the creative process will become a playground where creatives can login to their sandbox, increase and decrease randomness and tweak parameters by coding in strange creative bunches like:

Logical thinking

What comes next is some common sense. Aware that this new logo would need to be read on a clothes label, as well as a store front, I ruled out the use of any intricate or detailed logo design. Similarly, using a plain ‘M’ wouldn’t do the trick, as it gave no sense of elevation. The ‘M’ would need wings.

The zeitgeist

Around that time, camouflage and stencilled fonts were becoming a recognizable trend in fashion. This was the inspiration behind the stencilled effect on the ‘M’, which now gave the impression it was being elevated from its stems.

The whole creative process from start to a finished logo took one afternoon. At the presentation to the client’s marketing manager, both options were laid out on the table. We were half expecting the usual non-committal poker face, but he jumped up from his chair and said, “that’s it!” pointing to option B. There were no changes and no feedback. It went straight to production.

The error of personal experience

Meanwhile, I was still struggling with the name. Unaware that Milano was the Spanish word for Milan, I kept thinking of birds. I had already stumbled on one distraction that would set my thinking apart radically. As a passionate ornithologist, I was just beginning to learn the name of birds in Spanish. Milano was the Spanish name for a bird of prey called the kite.

Strange connections

It may seem strange to get caught up with thinking about birds but there was a clear connection to the brief. One part caught my immediate attention - “We want to elevate the brand...”.

After Googling Milano, I had already noticed that the photo of the red kite I’d seen had angular wings, which, in a peculiar way, resembled the stems of the letter ‘M’. Remember those drawings of birds flying we would create as kids - a squiggle or an ‘M’ at best?

The agency director, also a qualified graphic designer, asked me to put together an alternative proposal to the one he was already planning on creating. In one sense this was a lateral vs. lineal thinking approach happening in real time.

From the director’s point of view, I was tasked with creating option B - the ‘ballast’ option. These gently nudge the client towards the agency’s favourite. He was inspired by the company name, Milano (the Spanish name for Milan). Before he began work, I could already see he was adopting a lineal approach:

I’ve been asked many times to explain my profession over the years, often in a conversation that goes as follows:

Them: So, what do you do?

Me: I’m a creative director.

Them (perplexed): Ok, so what do you do then?

Most people don’t get it. Creative direction is a nebulous area where common sense and logic won’t guarantee winning over hearts and triggering action.

Most creative media solutions address the very common problem of audience engagement, specifically the lack thereof. Ultimately, humans are like photons: following the path of least resistance. Because we live in a world with increasingly short attention spans, we shut down our receptors at the first sight of any friction that will encroach on our valuable time.

Watch the scrolling speed of any adolescent on a smart phone. It’s fast. So, what exactly does it take to make that adolescent stop and click? How is creativity and design leveraged to persuade and seduce? How the hell does a creative director come up with an idea that’ll work?

They’re tricky questions as there are many variables. Perhaps the only certainty is that some of the most provocative creative thinking often originates from lateral thinking, not vertical or lineal thinking.

One of the most insightful ways to understand lateral thinking is to see the process at work. Unfortunately, many vital parts of this thinking are hidden in the recesses of the mind. Whether conscious or subconscious, we see the results of creative thinking, but are rarely informed of the inspiration and thinking behind it.

To get this complete perspective on creative lateral thinking, we need to get personal. Let’s imagine we’re programming an algorithm, and we need to pick apart how a creative mind responded to a real brief and delivered a successful solution. We now know that generative AI, with the correct prompts and the correct control of randomness, can achieve some outstanding visual and text-based output, with minimal need for human input. We can now replicate those ‘rabbit -in-the-hat’ creative moments by controlling randomness, and by adding degrees of error combined with critical thinking and imaginative interpretations of the results. Generative AI will help creative directors to expedite the creation of options, but it will still require the input of personal experience to create the uniqueness we so often see in successful creative campaigns.

Let’s jump to Spain in the mid-nineties, to a modest communications agency where I worked as creative director. A new brief came in from the agency director: one of Spain’s male fashion retailers required a rebrand. They wanted to become more relevant to the younger generation and be the first choice for fashion conscious males who were contemplating buying their first suit.

The EIC model shows how various different types of emotion can have profound impacts on the decision-making process, but it’s important to note that branded content cannot directly control some of the stages involved. Instead, when planning content, brands should focus on the ‘characteristics of options’ and the ‘expected outcomes’ areas of the EIC model, which are perhaps best modified through the use of tone. Incidental influences such as the weather are, in spite of how hard we might wish otherwise, beyond the brand’s control.

Research from Robert Heath, David Brandt and Agnes Nairn, published in the Journal of Advertising Research, draws parallels between an interpersonal communication axiom introduced by Paul Watzlawick, famed Austrian-American psychologist, and the relationships between a brand and its audience. One of five interpersonal communication axioms to be developed by Watzlawick, it distinguishes between “communication”, which is the factual, indisputable content of a message, and “metacommunication”, the emotionally charged qualifier which shapes a message’s tone. For brand content, this “metacommunication” is often known as “creativity”, and it is this emotional creativity, argue Heath, Brandt and Nairn, that builds brand relationships (Heath, Brand and Nairn, 2006).

One need look no further than some of history’s most popular advertisements to see proof of that theory in action. Cast your mind back to the sight of a purple wall as the opening notes of Phil Collin’s In The Air Tonight begin to play in the background. The camera pans and reveals a gorilla sat behind a set of drums, taking in the music. Then, as the chorus hits, the animal launches into a now-iconic drum solo. The Cadbury advert, part of the brand’s ‘a glass and a half full of joy’ series, has little to do with chocolate and provides no explicitly informative content, but is now intrinsically linked with the brand for many UK residents who were hooked the first time they they saw it. It was so successful in fact, that the advertisement was cited as one of the driving factors behind Cadbury’s 6 percent year-on-year revenue growth in Britain, Ireland and emerging markets in 2007.

Using this model, it’s possible to identify several areas wherein emotion has had an effect on the rational thought process previously believed to power human decision making. The group’s findings, supported by numerous other items of research into emotional impact, identified that emotion can effect the ways in which audiences perceive certain content features, distort statistics, or set different goals. The group goes further, adding that “current emotions can also indirectly influence decision making by changing predicted utility for possible decision outcomes” (Lerner et al, 2015).

For companies planning content campaigns, the message is clear: while information is important, the emotional state of the audience will determine how they assess that information, and what they remember from it. But what kinds of emotions should content aim to trigger in order to drive engagement?

According to Lerner, Li, Valdesolo and Kassam, so-called “high-certainty emotions” such as happiness, anger and disgust will increase heuristic processing by placing focus on the credibility of the content source instead of the quality of its argument and content (Lerner et al, 2015). This could mean that an audience would be more receptive to the concepts being proposed, and less likely to doubt the information presented.

The importance of emotional connection in creating brand relationships

In their synthesis and analysis of over 35 years of research into the effects of emotion on human decision making processes, published in the Annual Review of Psychology 2015, Jennifer S. Lerner, Ye Li, Piercarlo Valdesolo and Karim S. Kassam identified that “many psychological scientists now assume that emotions are, for better or worse, the dominant driver of most meaningful decisions in life” (Lerner et al, 2015). The group specified several ways in which emotions can impact the decision-making process, and proposed the emotion-imbued choice model (EIC) as shown in the image below.

It’s time to talk about feelings:
The impact of cultural differences in emotion on brand relationships

Heart versus mind in the content landscape

We live in a new age of digital brand engagement and increased globalization, with international audiences sharing information across borders more easily than ever before. Accordingly, it wouldn’t take much for companies to assume that campaigns which resonate with the target demographic in one region can be quickly rolled out to other locales with similar success. However, this assumption unfortunately fails to understand the nuanced role that emotional engagement plays in the process of convincing consumers and employees to engage with a brand, and how that emotional engagement is affected by cultural and linguistic differences.

To create successful content campaigns, all stakeholders involved in their planning, whether consumer or employee focused, need to understand the roles of emotional connection and rationalization in converting the audience into brand users and, ultimately, brand advocates. For content to be globally successful, production teams also need to understand how to adapt their content for international audiences, taking into account local culture and consumer expectations.

Traditionally, branded content, and advertising in particular, is designed to be as informative as possible, helping the audience to make logical, rationalized decisions about whether or not to purchase a product or become invested in a brand. While this approach can produce one-time purchases, it doesn’t typically foster the kinds of long-term brand-consumer or brand-employee relationships that result in brand loyalty and advocacy.

Rather than strictly informative content, it is emotional messaging that generally engages the audience and provides the foundations for brand relationships. These relationships typically begin with a decision on the part of the audience: whether or not to make a purchase or engage with branded content. According to recent psychological research, this is a decision that is heavily influenced by the audience’s emotional state (Lerner et al, 2015).

02 EMOTIONS AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

JACK SIMPSON

Indeed, Heath, Brandt and Nairn performed research on subjects in two markets (the US and the UK) to find out the effect that certain advertisements had on brand favourability. The advertisements were assessed with the Cognitive Emotive Power Test (CEP Test), which measures a campaign’s “emotive power” (relating to emotional content) and “cognitive power” (relating to rational content designed to inform) and then shown to an audience which confirmed whether they remembered the advertisement or not. The audience was then asked to rate each company on how positively they regarded it. The experiment showed that memorable advertisements with higher “emotive power” had a large impact on brand favourability, while the “cognitive power” rating had little effect in either market (Heath, Brandt and Nairn, 2006).

Interestingly, Heath, Brandt and Nairn identify research from Robert Bornstein, published in the Psychological Bulletin, which states that when non consciously processed emotional content is processed consciously, its effectiveness is weakened. This is to say that when the audience is able to identify the cause of its emotional state, it is able to rationalize it and dilute the effect. For content campaigns such as advertisement, Bornstein argues that “the less aware consumers are of emotional elements in advertising, the better they are likely to work, because the viewer has less opportunity to rationally evaluate, contradict, and weaken the advertising’s potency”. For companies preparing large, multinational campaigns, whether aimed at consumers or employees, this is of particular note. Any frictions arising due to issues such as cultural dissonance could result in one of two outcomes – an emotional aversion to something that doesn’t reflect the audience’s cultural identity, or a rationalization of the attempt at emotional messaging, and a weakening of the desired effect. Of course, neither option will lead to brand advocacy, which is why it’s important to consider the ways in which strategies for emotional engagement will need to adapt to different regions and target markets.

How emotional interpretation differs between cultures and languages

An increased focus on the emotional salience of branded content brings its own challenges for companies looking to engage their domestic audiences, which are then further complicated by attempts to appeal to globally dispersed communities. While it’s always been known that global collateral has to be altered to ensure that language and figures are correct for each market, this relatively newfound need to connect on a subconscious, emotional level raises questions as to how human emotions may vary across borders, and how big an influence culture has on our thought processes.

In research for Emotion Review, Michael Boiger and Batja Mesquita from the University of Leuven state that “most of our emotions occur in the contexts of social interactions and relationships” (Boiger and Mesquita, 2012). It stands to reason then, that as culture and social norms change, so too should the individual’s emotional response to external stimuli and their understanding of the emotional valence of a given situation.

A 2008 study called Putting the face in context: Cultural differences in the perception of emotions from facial behavior, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, compared Western and Japanese understandings of a target person’s emotional state. The findings showed distinct differences in how the two groups understood the same situations. Whereas Western audiences focused only on the target person’s facial expressions to discern their emotional state, Japanese audiences took the expressions of other people surrounding the target into consideration as well. The target person wasn’t considered to be as happy when the people surrounding them looked angry or sad (Masuda et al, 2008).

This is potentially due to differences in cultural constructions of the ‘self’. In Culture and the Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion and Motivation, Hazel Rose Markus and Shinobu Kitayama distinguish between cultures which have an independent view of the self, and those that have an interdependent view of the self. Individuals belonging to cultures with an independent view of the self typically have “faith in the inherent separateness of distinct persons”, and are aware of a typical cultural goal to “become independent from others and to discover and express one’s unique attributes”. In contrast, cultures with an interdependent view of the self believe that the individual “cannot be properly characterized as a bounded whole, for it changes structure with the nature of the particular social context” (Markus and Kityama, 1991).

Individuals from these two distinct cultural backgrounds will, according to Markus and Kitayama, exhibit key differences in how they view their roles in society, and how they build their own self-esteem. In their study, Markus and Kitayama state that people with an independent view of the self will see a need to be unique, express themselves, realize internal attributes, promote own goals and be direct in order to fulfil their role in society. Their ability to express themselves and the validation they receive for their internal attributes would be the foundations of their self-esteem.

Contrast this with people from a society with an interdependent view of the self, who will typically believe that their role in society is to fit in, stay in their proper place, engage in appropriate action for each situation, promote others’ goals and be indirect (Markus and Kitayama, 1991). Here, the ability to adjust, restrain oneself and preserve social harmony are the foundations of self-esteem.

As self-esteem and self-realization are often considered to be at the core of motivational processes, this core difference between how members of independent and interdependent cultures see themselves and their roles in society could have significant impacts on how international companies plan emotionally engaging content. In their research, Markus and Kitayama hypothesize that, while people from independent cultures might be driven by a need to achieve, self-actualize and avoid cognitive conflict, those from interdependent groups might be more motivated to fully realize their own connectedness and interdependence (Markus and Kitayama, 1991).

Content targeting Western audiences then, which typically trends towards the independent cultural model, might see more success if it highlights the ways in which it can help the audience to assert their individuality, and ‘break free’ from the standardized rules of society, separating themselves from the masses. Conversely, content aimed at more interdependent audiences, in markets such as Japan for instance, should promote the brand’s ability to help the audience fulfil their social roles, whether it be through the fulfilment of work or familial responsibilities.

Indeed, Markus and Kitayama identify that, in interdependent cultures, ‘positive feelings about the self should derive from fulfilling the tasks associated with being interdependent with relevant others: occupying one’s proper place and maintaining harmony’ (Markus and Kitayama, 1991). It stands to reason that without the correct motivation, audiences are not going to engage with branded collateral, and are unlikely to form long-lasting brand relationships. . As audiences from different cultural backgrounds are motivated by different stimuli, brand collateral and content will need to vary tone, messaging and emotional valence in order to provoke the ideal response, while remaining consistent with the overarching brand identity.

In order to create strong emotional connections between brand collateral and the audience, the emotional narrative needs to be frictionless and aligned with cultural expectations, as previously identified by Bornstein. By tuning into the daily emotions that consumers and employees face, brands are able to cultivate a feeling of familiarity, one that helps close the gap between the company and its audience. As Boiger and Mesquita found, however, the most prevalent emotions seem to depend on the cultural background of each locale and whether it supports an independent or interdependent view of society. The pair identify studies showing that in Japan, ‘socially engaging emotions’, for instance shame or friendly feelings towards others, were felt more intensely than in American contexts, where ‘socially disengaging emotions’, such as pride and anger, were more prevalent. In short, the social background of a locale defines the emotions, interactions and relationships that the audience engages in (Boiger and Mesquita, 2012).

Somewhat bizarrely, the UK wasn’t the only European market infatuated with a campaign prominently featuring a gorilla in 2007. An animatronic gorilla also starred in Italian drink brand Crodino’s iconic advertisements in a series of somewhat comical situations, each time ordering a Crodino at a bar. The takeaway here is unfortunately not quite as simple as “gorilla equals successful content”, but it’s clear that these advertisements, beloved by audiences in their respective countries, managed to forge an emotional connection that has endured in the teen years since they were introduced.

A new model for understanding interactions with branded content

In response to these findings, and to help companies understand the impacts of culture and emotion on audience engagement with branded collateral, this report proposes a modified version of the EIC model, titled the Branded Collateral Engagement model (BCE).

It is believed that by careful understanding of cultural motivation and subsequent development of tone and emotional messaging, brands can develop deeper knowledge of typical ‘characteristics of the decision maker’ and ultimately influence the audience’s perception of the ‘characteristics of options’.

In order to create brand advocates, companies need to leverage their creativity and produce culturally relevant, emotionally resonant narratives that appeal to the audience’s social background and motivate them to engage with the content. By exploring localized social constructs of the self, brands will be able to identify the stimuli that motivate audiences to engage, whether it be through the promotion of individuality and differentiation from the crowd, or through role fulfilment and the strengthening of social harmony. Playing to emotions more prevalent in local society should also help increase the feeling of familiarity between the content and the audience, removing friction from the consumer or employee experience and allowing for more direct engagement with the material.

Indeed, in the Journal of Market-Focused Management, Geok Lau suggests that a consumer will typically ‘examine a brand and judge if it is “similar” to himself or herself. If a brand’s physical attributes or personality are judged to be similar to the consumer’s self-image, the consumer is likely to trust it’ (Lau and Lee, 1999). Here then, expert local insights are needed to ensure that content is created from the ground up in each target market and can resonate with local audiences. Research from George Zinkhan and Jae Hong in Advances in Consumer Research provides further support for this statement, saying that ‘consumers buy or prefer those products which possess images most similar to the images they either perceive or wish of themselves’ (Hong and Zinkhan, 1995).

Lau argues that trust in a brand is also impacted by its predictability, stating that ‘a brand’s predictability enhances confidence because the consumer knows that nothing unexpected may happen when it’s used’ (Lau and Lee, 1999). Building on this idea, the ‘actual outcome’ step has been included in the BCE model.

Whether it’s an employee interacting with training materials or a consumer purchasing a product, if the actual outcome is in line with the emotional ‘expected outcome’, it is likely that the customer will begin to develop feelings of trust towards the brand. Here, it is important that collateral remains tonally consistent and doesn’t overpromise in order to ensure the ‘actual outcome’ and ‘expected outcome’ are in alignment. Through repeated interactions wherein the ‘actual outcome’ and ‘expected outcome’ do not significantly differ, we can hypothesize that the audience should develop brand loyalty, making them more receptive to future branded collateral. In the BCE model, this has been identified as the ‘brand advocacy loop’.

While the current model of creating branded collateral in one language, and then adapting it for other locales can work, the BCE model, alongside findings from Lau, Zinkhan and Hong, indicates that companies would see stronger brand advocacy by concurrently creating content specifically targeted at each region.

Incorporating localization at the start of the content creation pipeline allows teams to design content with an understanding of local ‘cultural motivation’, which will shape the ways the audiences receive content messaging. Teams can then look at using ‘tone’ with greater cultural specificity, meaning they will be able to guide audiences towards positive interpretations of the ‘characteristics of options’ more reliably than before. This will result in branded collateral that is more likely to create favourable feelings towards the brand among the audience, and promote brand advocacy at a fundamental level, creating strong brand image and reputation.

Jamie Reid, Pretty Vacant

The Spice Girls

Shiota Chiharu

Barbie

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AI generated image and prompt

In an article for the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, Kenneth M. Heilman examined potential explanations for how non-conscious thinking can produce these moments of creative inspiration, citing possible links between lower levels of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine (caused by a relaxed state of mind) and improved creativity-boosting cognitive flexibility. While further research into the specific relationship between creative output and brain function is required, investigations into the performance of students with high levels of norepinephrine, caused by anxiety, on test questions requiring creative reasoning skills have shown that they typically performed worse than their less anxious peers with lower levels of norepinephrine. This performance gap is then closed by administration of the drug propranolol, which blocks the influence of norepinephrine (Heilman, 2016).

Studies such as these point to clear links between lower levels of stress and anxiety-induced norepinephrine and increased levels of creative output. It could be possible then, that these ‘relaxed’ states are the times that nonconscious creative thought is able to occur most freely, resulting in the ‘ah-ha’ moment when these concepts are recognized by the conscious activity of the prefrontal cortex.

New horizons for creativity

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of creativity for many is that, almost by definition, it is entirely unpredictable. As humanity continues to produce new technology and new media, the potential for its creative output is only set to expand. Consider the ways in which film has grown over the years, and think of that growth reflected in the advance of virtual reality technology or artificial intelligence.

At Rutgers’ Art & AI Lab, Marian Mazzone (Department of Art & Architectural History, College of Charleston) and Ahmed Elgammal (Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University) created an artificial intelligence known as AICAN. Using a ‘creative adversarial network’ (CAN), the software is able to produce art almost autonomously. The pair provided the algorithm with 80,000 images covering 500 years of Western art, which the system uses as a base upon which to innovate and produce new artistic works, in a process similar to the ways in which artists use previous works to inform new pieces. When the art was displayed alongside work from contemporary art fair Art Basel, the human audience was largely unable to discern which pieces were human-produced and which where machine-made. In fact, people attributed machine-generated images to human artists 75% of the time, even using words such as ‘inspiring’ and ‘communicative’ at the same levels as they did for human-produced works, suggesting that the AI had just as much creativity as its human counterparts.

As advancements in the field of artificial intelligence such as this continue to redefine what computers can do and blur the lines between human and computer output, it’s possible that we will have to redefine what it means to be creative all over again. While the Greeks believed that creativity was solely divine in its origins, and Kant sought to limit the groups of people deemed creative, future developments will spring further philosophical questions: it is only relatively recently that we’ve accepted the idea that humans are innately creative – will we extend this belief to AI?

Creativity spreads through society

As time moved on, views on humanity’s relationship with creativity changed in fits and spurts. The idea that creativity was a trait held solely by the gods gave way to the concept of divine inspiration. Though similar to the concepts put forth by Plato, later understandings of divine inspiration were more in line with Aristotle’s beliefs, giving the artist more credit for the work they produced. Crucially, the range of people believed to be creative expanded, and the conversation about who was creative moved forward to include painters, sculptors, and potentially scientists.

This was particularly notable in the creative hubs overseen by the Medici family during the Renaissance, which saw people from diverse fields come together to form communities with one goal in mind: to create something new. This gathering of talent in an attempt to promote creativity has even been mimicked in the modern era by companies such as Apple, who look to produce new technologies to appeal to the masses through these creative hubs.

During the Enlightenment, society moved further away from the heavily religious doctrine that had dominated European culture for over a thousand years, and philosophers and intellectuals began to embrace the ideals of reason and logic. As a result, many began emphasizing the concept of individual creativity over the classical belief in divine inspiration. Definitions of this ‘individual creativity’ indicated that this was an innately human trait, and one that ‘geniuses’ could use to realize artistic achievements or scientific breakthroughs.

Not all philosophers were happy to include the sciences in the creative realm. For famed 18th Century philosopher Immanuel Kant, scientists didn’t ‘create’ anything – instead, they ‘discovered’ it. Kant argued that, while artists created new rules and modes of expression through their art, scientists merely uncovered rules that already existed, whether we were cognizant of them or not. This is in stark contrast to modern conceptions of creativity, which include the idea of finding links between seemingly disparate pieces of information. This is what has led us to thinking of leading scientists such as Einstein as ‘creative geniuses’.

Modern explorations of creativity in neuroscience

Our modern understanding of creativity has become increasingly democratized. While some people are generally thought to be more creative than others, we now tend to believe that the potential to be creative lies within us all. From online self-help gurus preaching the virtues of ‘getting in touch with our creative sides’ to businesses pushing employees to think of ‘creative solutions’ to potentially mundane problems, creativity is within everyone’s reach.

In light of this modern belief that creativity is an intrinsically human virtue, study of the concept has shifted. While pre-modern examinations of creativity focused heavily on tracing its philosophical roots, modern analysis has begun focusing more on the physical neurological processes that drive ‘creative thinking’. In a paper for Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, titled The cognitive neuroscience of creativity, Arne Dietrich, professor of cognitive neuroscience, examines and outlines a ‘framework of creativity based on functional neuroanatomy’ (Dietrich, 2004).

As part of his research, Dietrich identifies that creative thought is typically born out of a combination of four thought mechanisms – specifically from interactions between two modes of thought (deliberate and spontaneous), and two types of information (emotional and cognitive) – and is then ultimately realized by the prefrontal cortex (Dietrich, 2004).

Acknowledging creativity as the ‘epitome of cognitive flexibility’, Dietrich argues that the advanced mental constructs made possible via the prefrontal cortex (such as self-reflective consciousness and willed action) are the keys to creative thinking in humans (Dietrich, 2004).

The role that the prefrontal cortex plays in the birth of creative concepts could potentially differ based on which mode of thought originally produced it. While the deliberate thought mode is instigated by the prefrontal cortex and thus produces results that seem more rational, ‘eureka’ moments in which creative ideas ‘suddenly appear’ could be identified as a result of the spontaneous thought mode.

The story of humanity’s relationship with the creative

In the beginning

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JACK SIMPSON

Simplistically, creativity is leveraging your imagination to invent something [new]. Definitions become contentious as soon as originality is brought into the equation. As originality is often used to measure creativity, I would cite the words of film director, Jim Jarmusch when he explained the creative process:

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."

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