An unlikely pairing some would surmise but they’re actually made for each other. In another of various selected articles from AdAge, this article I read recently by Matt Kaupa discusses how best for brands to align data with creative and do so from the beginning. Developing and studying one or the other separately won’t do any good.
At first glance, “data” and “creative” feel like opposites. One loves structure, the other color. One obsesses over decimal points, the other ellipses. But when they team up, the results can be surprising. And the best work happens when they collaborate from the start—not when data shows up at the end to judge. Here’s how to get there.
Don’t wait until after launch
Too often, data gets invited to the party only after a campaign is out in the world. At that point, it’s just there to grade the work, not shape it. Data and creative are two ingredients in the same dish. If you taste the soup only after it’s served, you can complain about the flavor—but you missed your shot to add the seasoning.
Strategy: Bring analysts into the creative kickoff. Audience insights—demographics, psychographics, behaviors, even reactions to past campaigns—can shape tone, format and story direction from day one. If you want to measure success, then why wouldn’t measurement help guide the strategy?
Example: Want to talk to busy moms in Charlotte? Don’t guess. See what they actually engage with at 10 p.m. Trying to position a brand as “premium” but still “relatable”? Let sentiment data show the words they use—not the words you wish they used.
Speak in the audience’s words
Every brand has its own vocabulary, but if your audience doesn’t speak that language, you’re basically shouting into the void. It doesn’t matter how clever your copy is if no one understands it—or worse, if it feels out of touch.
Strategy: Pull top organic search terms and social comments into the copy deck. Use their words, not yours.
Example: In industries like health care or finance, expert language doesn’t always translate. Otolaryngology? That’s just an ENT.
Don’t ignore A/B test losers
Everyone loves a winner, but the losing versions of a campaign are often way more interesting. They show you where instincts clashed with reality—and that tension is where new ideas live.
Strategy: Treat every test as a learning lab, not just a scoreboard. Every version has a story to tell—whether it’s what to do, or what to avoid.
Example: Sometimes insights come from a single weird data blip. Why did that version spike in Wisconsin? It didn’t have anything to do with cheese—or overrated football teams (skol!).
Let dashboards tell a story
Dashboards don’t have to be painful. But let’s be honest: They usually are. They’re dense, ugly and built for people who already live and breathe numbers. For everyone else? They’re more like a punishment than a resource.
Strategy: Co-build reporting visuals with designers so your dashboards are as compelling as your campaigns. When data looks like a story, people actually use it. Also, dummy-proof your insights: structure data and visuals in a way that reduces the number of assumptions—especially wrong ones—that your audience has to make.
Example: Imagine if your media dashboard looked less like a spreadsheet exploded and more like an infographic—highlighting trends, telling a narrative, and pulling out the “so what” at a glance. One client stopped ignoring their reports entirely once we reframed their monthly dashboard like a campaign storyboard. Suddenly, the CFO wasn’t just tolerating the data—he was quoting it in meetings.
Flip feedback into fuel
Brands collect mountains of feedback but rarely use it for anything more than “good job” or “try again.” What if, instead of treating it like a report card, you treated it like raw material? Customers are basically writing copy for you every day.
Strategy: Use real-time listening tools to turn survey responses or social reactions into iterative campaign content.
Example: Imagine a spot stitched together directly from customer feedback. Or a campaign whose copy comes entirely from what people are saying online.
Wrap smarter
When the campaign’s over, most people move on to the next thing. But the wrap-up is where the hidden treasure lives. Go beyond “what performed” and dig into why—because those answers set you up for the next win.
Strategy: Cluster analysis can reveal new audience segments. Performance patterns can challenge assumptions. Maybe Gen Z does like long-form after all—just not when you lead with product shots.
Data shouldn’t chase creative, and creative shouldn’t wait for data. The smartest work happens when both teams co-own the problem from day one. Remember that data isn’t just numbers. Just as we need to speak our audience’s language, we also need to speak the creatives’ language. Incorporate qualitative data—social comments, organic searches, reviews, surveys—to make sure we don’t lose the forest for the numbers.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
Some say yes but CMOs are still chasing ads while consumers crave something beyond a screen. I recently ran across an article in AdAge about this and thought it worthwhile to pass on. Seems like the industry is changing right before our eyes. It’s difficult to keep up let alone try to figure out where it’s headed years from now. Hopefully this article will clarify some of the mystery.
The rules of attention have changed. Ads cost more than ever but work less than ever. People are paying to skip, block or scroll right past them. But experiences? They’re lining up for those and sometimes paying to get in.
Look at Lollapalooza, Coachella or the US Open, where the brands aren’t a backdrop, they’re part of the headline. Festivals and big cultural moments aren’t just about music or sports anymore; they’re about the branded experiences people talk about long after the event ends.
The disconnect is clear. Netflix has 247 million subscribers paying to avoid ads. Spotify Premium has 220 million doing the same. Every one of those subscriptions is a consumer saying: “My attention is valuable enough that I’ll pay to protect it.” Yet advertisers keep pouring money into channels people are actively opting out of. That’s not a strategy; that’s a slow leak.
Meanwhile, experiential is thriving. The category grew 10.5% last year to $128 billion. Why? Because instead of interrupting what people want, it is what people want. A great branded experience doubles as entertainment, content and memory. It creates emotion, builds loyalty and turns people into advocates.
Vibrant Urban Pop-Up Storefront Transforms Cityscape with Interactive Marketing and Philanthropy – Adobe Stock
Younger consumers are driving this shift fastest. They don’t just want to sit back and watch a brand throw messages at them. They want to take part, contribute, belong. Creator culture proves it, and experiential is the live version of that same energy.
Action above ads. Experience above everything. The brands that win are the ones that stop interrupting what people care about and become what people care about.
The shift is already happening. The only question is: Will you lead it, or watch it pass you by?
Well?
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
The advertising industry has seen beaucoup changes over the past few years. One recent change that is sweeping the ad scene is Artificial Intelligence or AI for short. We’re still grappling with it.
Man and AI robot waiting for a job interview: AI vs human competition Credit: Adobe Stock
With this in mind, I came across an article written by the Op-Ed Contributor of MediaPost, Manjiry Tamhane, who sheds a fairly comprehensive take on AI and how best to understand it and cope with it to enhance our creativity and, in turn, our marketing and advertising. It’s a bit of a long read but worth it.
Writes Manjiry . . .
The marketing landscape is undergoing a seismic shift. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is not just transforming how brands engage with consumers—it’s revolutionising how we measure, optimise, and ultimately prove the value of creativity itself. For marketers eager to demonstrate the tangible impact of their creative work on sales, AI-powered measurement techniques offer an unprecedented opportunity.
This is an exciting, future-focused moment for our industry. Creativity has always been at the heart of effective marketing, but now, thanks to AI, we can finally unlock its full commercial potential with scientific precision.
Why Creative Effectiveness Is More Important Than Ever
In a world where consumers are bombarded by thousands of messages every day, creativity is what cuts through the noise. It shapes perceptions, drives engagement, and builds lasting brand equity. However while media optimisation—deciding where and when to place messages—has long been a focus, it’s increasingly clear that creative quality is just as critical. In fact, research from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) suggests that up to 49% of a campaign’s sales uplift can be attributed to creativity.
Yet, for years, measuring the true impact of creative ideas and executions has been notoriously difficult. Marketers have often relied on intuition, anecdotal evidence, or basic metrics such as impressions and click-through rates. While tools like ad recall surveys, focus groups, and creative awards offer some insight, these methods frequently fall short of capturing the full contribution of creativity to business outcomes. Traditional measures tend to overlook how creative quality drives emotional engagement, brand equity, and importantly, sales impact.
Enter AI. With the advent of advanced data analytics and machine learning, we now have the tools to decode what makes creative work effective—and, crucially, to link it directly to sales performance.
The Evolution of AI in Marketing: From Data Mining to Generative Models
To appreciate the transformative power of AI, it’s worth reflecting on how far we’ve come. In the 1990s, AI in marketing was largely limited to rule-based systems—useful for direct marketing, credit scoring, and basic customer segmentation. The 2000s saw the rise of machine learning and web analytics, enabling marketers to understand online behaviour in new ways.
The 2010s ushered in the era of deep learning and personalisation. AI could now analyse unstructured data—images, text, even video—at scale, powering everything from chatbots to personalised recommendations. Fast forward to today, and generative AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Llama are producing compelling copy, visuals, and even video content tailored to specific audiences and platforms.
What’s changed most dramatically is speed and scale. Since 2010, the cost of computing power has plummeted, while the volume of global data has exploded. This abundance of data fuels ever more sophisticated AI systems, capable of processing information and generating insights in real time. While AI has enabled marketers to analyse vast datasets and uncover patterns, we are now entering an era defined by ‘agentic AI’—artificial intelligence systems that can act with autonomy and initiative. These AI agents are capable of proactively managing tasks, making decisions, and optimising campaigns in real time.
For marketers, this means moving beyond hindsight (what happened) and insight (why it happened), to true foresight—predicting what will work best before campaigns even launch.
Cracking the Code: How AI Measures Creative Effectiveness
So, how does AI help us truly understand the effectiveness of creative work?
The answer lies in the ability to analyse vast numbers of creative assets—across multiple channels, formats, and iterations—and extract the features that drive results. With agentic AI, intelligent agents can autonomously evaluate creative assets, identify high-performing elements, and recommend improvements, freeing up human teams to focus on strategy and ideation.
Here’s how next-generation AI-led techniques are transforming creative measurement:
1. Feature Importance
Machine learning models can automatically score each creative feature—be it a visual element, tone of voice, messaging, or format—against key business outcomes such as sales or brand lift. By connecting creative features to end-market measurement, marketers can pinpoint which elements have the greatest impact, and which may be holding back performance.
2. Feature Testing
With thousands of creative variations running across different channels, it’s impossible for humans to keep track of what works best. AI analyses past campaigns to identify which combinations of features consistently perform well. AI agents can continuously test and learn from past campaigns, autonomously adjusting parameters to find optimal combinations. This enables teams to establish rules and guidelines for future creative development, ensuring that each execution is built for success.
3. Predictive Modelling
Perhaps most excitingly, AI allows marketers to simulate and predict the likely performance of creative assets before they go live. If a particular advert underperformed, predictive modelling can reveal which features—if added or emphasised—would have boosted its impact. This empowers creative teams to experiment boldly, iterate rapidly, and optimise campaigns with confidence.
4. Content Recommendations
Advanced AI models don’t just diagnose problems—they prescribe solutions. By analysing patterns across successful campaigns, AI can recommend specific changes to creative content, such as introducing the brand name earlier in a video or adjusting the call-to-action for greater clarity. Crucially, these recommendations respect brand guidelines and ensure consistency across all touchpoints.
5. Visualising the Brand Space
AI can also map out the “creative execution space” for a brand and its competitors, revealing who owns which creative territories and where there may be opportunities for differentiation. For example, analysis of fast-food advertising in the US has shown how one brand’s creative approach began to encroach on another’s distinctive territory—insights that would be nearly impossible to glean manually.
AI Across the Funnel: Precision at Every Stage
While AI is transforming creative measurement, it’s important to remember that the fundamentals of marketing remain unchanged. At its core, marketing is about guiding customers through a journey—from awareness and consideration to conversion, retention, and advocacy.
What’s changed is how AI enables us to execute each stage with unprecedented precision and agility:
Top of Funnel: AI analyses massive datasets to segment audiences and optimise ad placements, maximising reach and impressions.
Mid-Funnel: Personalisation engines ensure that potential customers see content tailored to their needs, while predictive analytics anticipate what information or incentives will move them closer to purchase.
Bottom of Funnel: AI streamlines the conversion process, optimising landing pages, personalising calls-to-action, and automating follow-ups.
Post-Conversion: AI-driven customer service tools provide instant support, while predictive models trigger retention strategies and suggest complementary products.
At every stage, AI helps marketers model key performance indicators (KPIs), attribute value accurately, and optimise investments for maximum growth. Crucially, it is creative that acts as the catalyst, moving consumers seamlessly through the funnel—from capturing attention at the awareness stage, to sparking interest and consideration, driving action at conversion, and fostering loyalty post-purchase. By harnessing AI to measure and refine creative effectiveness at each touchpoint, brands can ensure their messaging not only reaches the right audience but also resonates powerfully, guiding consumers along the journey and maximising the impact of every marketing investment.
Taking Action: How to Embrace the Future of Creative Measurement
To harness the full potential of AI-led creative effectiveness measurement, brands should consider the following actions:
Adopt a Data-Driven Mindset: Invest in AI-powered tools and talent to move from intuition to evidence-based creative strategies. Make data central to every decision.
Foster Experimentation: Encourage rapid testing and learning, using AI to simulate and refine creative concepts before launch. Create a culture where experimentation is celebrated and failure is seen as a step towards improvement.
Align Creativity with Business Goals: Use AI insights to ensure every creative decision is linked to measurable sales impact, not just aesthetic appeal or awards.
Assess Organisational Readiness: Evaluate your organisation’s data, technology, and people to ensure you’re equipped for sustainable, AI-driven growth. Tools like the Marketing Impact Readiness Assessment (MIRA) can help benchmark your capabilities.
Prioritise Privacy and Ethics: As you embrace AI, ensure robust governance and transparency around data usage. Build trust with customers by being clear about how their data informs creative targeting and measurement.
A Bold New Era for Creative Effectiveness
AI isn’t just reshaping creative development—it’s redefining how we measure, optimise, and prove the value of creativity. However, the true power of this new era lies in the collaboration between human ingenuity and AI-driven insight. While AI brings speed, scale, and analytical precision, it is human creativity, intuition, and strategic thinking that inspire ideas, craft compelling narratives, and connect emotionally with audiences.
Credit: Adobe Stock
Brands that embrace these future-focused techniques—harnessing the best of both human talent and artificial intelligence—will lead the way, delivering campaigns that don’t just look great, but drive real business results. The future of creative effectiveness is bright, bold, and powered by a partnership between imagination and intelligence.
Now is the time to combine your team’s creative vision with the transformative capabilities of AI, creating marketing that inspires, engages, and delivers measurable growth.
Are you ready to seize the opportunity? The next chapter of creative effectiveness starts now—with humans and AI working together.
What form that will take, who knows. One thing’s for sure; it’s the next stop on Creativity’s journey to persuasive excellence.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
Well, Data, as all Trekkers know, was an Android, not a robot. It was a very sensitive distinction in his day. Yet, one can’t help but wonder what one non-human form of life would think of another non-human form of life creating advertising in the manner humans do.
While humorous, I can just picture Klaatu instructing Gort about a forthcoming ad for NASA’s Artemis IV mission to Jupiter. (Note: Those of you not having a clue as to what I am referring, Google “Day the Earth Stood Still” especially the 1951 version)
Gort
Recently, I read where a reporter from the Wall Street Journal did an article on the role of AI (Artificial Intelligence) writing and redoing advertising. Interesting, I thought, so I made it the focus of this week’s blog post about another aspect of creativity in the early 21st. Century. My thanks to both The Journal and Patrick Coffee for lending credence to this post.
In late 2021, as states eased pandemic restrictions and consumers began flying again, travel search company Kayak needed a message that would help it stand out against bigger rivals.
Most travel ads focused on “the family reunion space, soft piano music, the get-together on the beach,” said Matthew Clarke, vice president of North American marketing for the Booking Holdings Inc. company. Kayak took a different approach with the “Kayak Deniers” campaign, which went live in January and poked fun at the rise of online conspiracy theories. In one ad, an angry mother insists to her family that Kayak isn’t real, screaming, “Open your eyes!”
Inspiration for the ads came from an unlikely source: artificial intelligence.
Kayak worked with New York advertising agency Supernatural Development LLC, whose internal AI platform combines marketers’ answers to questions about their business with consumer data drawn from social media and market research to suggest campaign strategies, then automatically generates ideas for advertising copy and other marketing materials.
Supernatural’s AI found that Kayak should target its campaign largely toward young, upper-income men, who it said would respond to humor about Americans’ inability to agree on basic facts in politics and pop culture, said Michael Barrett, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Supernatural.
“That gave us a good amount of license to zig where the category was zagging and to be more relevant, more provocative,” Mr. Clarke said of the AI findings.
The campaign has been one of Kayak’s most successful to date in driving brand favorability, Mr. Clarke said.
Marketers have primarily used AI in a creative capacity in services like creative automation, which tests thousands of slight variations on elements such as ad copy and color schemes to determine which combinations will best attract consumers’ attention.
But AI is expected to change marketing practices drastically in coming years thanks to new tools like OpenAI Inc.’s automated language generator GPT-3, which allows algorithms to better understand different languages and produce original text content, said Tom Davenport, distinguished professor of information technology and management at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., who co-wrote a 2019 paper on the subject.
Unilever PLC’s Dollar Shave Club recently began working with AI firm Addition Technologies Inc., whose platform can analyze millions of social-media posts, to help identify themes for use in marketing products that range from razors to wet wipes.
“It’s like having a machine hive mind that you can just keep asking questions because it has completely consumed all comments on the subject,” said Matt Orser, vice president and head of creative at Dollar Shave Club.
Addition also worked with ad agency Droga5 LLC to create an interactive ad campaign for the New York Times that turns headlines from each subscriber’s reading history into a visual “portrait” of that person. Some headlines were too long to fit within the portraits’ design, so Addition programmed its platform to rewrite them in fewer than 50 characters, said a Times spokesman.
AI’s primary benefit for marketers is its ability to quickly complete projects, such as brand strategy briefs, that would take humans days or weeks, giving staffers more time to focus on other work, said Supernatural Chief Creative Officer Paul Caiozzo.
When Signal Messenger LLC, maker of encrypted messaging app Signal, wanted to plan its first major marketing campaign in 2021, it turned to AI marketing consulting firm DumDum LLC.
DumDum invites marketers to discuss their most pressing challenges in brief “thinkathon” sessions, then runs those ideas through an AI platform that matches them with potential solutions based on a growing pool of behavioral data and consumer surveys conducted by DumDum to provide CMOs with outside perspectives.
DumDum presented Signal with several options, and executives chose one that focused on the fact that Signal, unlike many other digital platforms, doesn’t collect user data. They bought several Instagram ads designed to highlight how its parent, Meta Platforms Inc., targets users with their own personal data, said Jun Harada, head of growth and communication at Signal. One post began, “You got this ad because you’re a certified public accountant in an open relationship.”
Facebook responded by shutting down Signal’s ad account, according to Mr. Harada. The move came only days after Apple Inc. announced sweeping data-privacy changes that would upend the digital advertising industry.
When used correctly, AI forces marketers to consider new perspectives and avoid simply repeating approaches that worked in the past, said DumDum founder Nathan Phillips.
“You can create a dance between human and computer that changes the way you think,” Mr. Phillips said.
The idea of AI as a creative partner isn’t new, but most campaigns have positioned it as a gimmick.
In 2018, Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus released what it called “the world’s first advert to be scripted entirely by AI.” However, a Lexus spokeswoman described that effort as a “one-off,” and it still needed a human director.
Increased use of AI could potentially eliminate some entry-level marketing jobs, but it will never replace the people required to ensure that content is fit for public consumption and to prevent controversies such as Microsoft Corp.’s anti-Semitic chat bot, said Mr. Davenport, the Babson College professor.
Ad industry leaders agreed that AI will supplement, not supplant, human ingenuity. “While [AI] can unlock the creative capacity of people by making their work more efficient and effective, sometimes we need to throw logic out the window and fall back on our intuition,” said Rob Reilly, global chief creative officer at ad giant WPP PLC.
More creative firms will begin using AI tools in the coming years, but most will not position themselves as AI-driven businesses, because CMOs aren’t particularly concerned with the process as long as the resulting campaigns are successful, said Mr. Caiozzo of Supernatural.
“AI is just the tool that is freeing me to do my job,” he said. “Most people don’t care how you bake the bread.”
Like it or not, AI is here to stay and will only adjust and modernize the ad industry for years to come.
Notes:
Sources: The Wall Street Journal and Patrick Coffee. Appeared in the August 11, 2022, print edition as ‘Robots Turn Creative as AI Helps Drive Ad Campaigns.’
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for a different kind of playground for creativity, innovation and inspiring stuff.
Forty-seven years ago this week, June 28, 1975, creativity lost an icon. A mentor to many both near and afar and an inspiration to those of us putting “pen to paper.” Rod Serling, creator and host of the TV series, The Twilight Zone, was a master at utilizing one’s imagination and turning it on its ear. And we loved him for it!
These quotes pay tribute not only to Rod but to various creative artists and thought leaders who have also played a role in tweaking our imagination and how we think.
Ijust want [people] to remember me a hundred years from now. I don’t care that they’re not able to quote any single line that I’ve written. But just that they can say, ‘Oh, he was a writer.’ That’s sufficiently an honored position for me. – Rod Serling
An important idea not communicated persuasively is like having no idea at all. — William Bernbach, Advertising Hall of Fame
Human beings must involve themselves in the anguish of other human beings. This, I submit to you, is not a political thesis at all. It is simply an expression of what I would hope might be ultimately a simple humanity for humanity’s sake. ― Rod Serling
Like the musical score, a mission statement is only as good as the performance it inspires. — Keith Reinhard, Advertising Hall of Fame
Let’s gear our advertising to sell goods, but let’s recognize also that advertising has a broad social responsibility. — Leo Burnett, Advertising Hall of Fame
Treasure diversity. Seek unity, not uniformity. Strive for oneness, not sameness. — Dan Zadra, American businessman and author
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. – H. G. Wells
Good advertising is written from one person to another. When it is aimed at millions, it rarely moves anyone. — Fairfax M. Cone, Advertising Hall of Fame
In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd. – Miguel de Cervantes
I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity. – Eleanor Roosevelt
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. – Truman Capote
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for a different kind of playground for creativity, innovation and inspiring stuff.
Images, works of art. Striking. Unsettling. Amazing. Jaw dropping. Awesome.
Creativity in its different forms.
Below are a few examples of spaces that accommodate large scale installations.
Going big in small spaces. Irrespective of the environments we design, there are always opportunities to create unexpected scale through architectural intervention. It’s a strong and powerful way for brands to transport an audience to another world.
Credits:
Artist Matthew Mazzotta has designed HOME at Tampa airport
AC Milan HQ by Fabio Novembre
Sophie’, 2009 in Germain Restaurant, Paris by Xavier Veilhan
‘Karma’ is by the Korean sculptor and installation artist DO HO SUH STUDIOS LLP
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for a different kind of playground for creativity, innovation and inspiring stuff.
Every once in awhile I run across an article that really speaks to me about my creativeness and my own psychological workings. This particular article by Dr. Mihaela Ivan Holtz speaks to that. I’ve highlighted her work in some of my previous blog posts. You may very well already enjoy a good relationship with a psychotherapist who understands your background and troubles. If not, seek one out. And refer to the link at the end of this post for more insightful information.
Now, Dr. Holtz, the floor, er, uh, post is yours . . .
As a creative, you use your emotions to tell compelling stories. When your art is born from a genuine emotional expression, you offer your audience a glimpse of the unique you – your interpretation and manifestation of human experiences.
There’s something about living in the full depth of human experience that is conducive to creativity. The extent to which one can step into the full breadth of their emotions is what makes them a true artist. The ability to be with and use complex and mixed layers of emotions is important for creativity.
It’s through the moments of deep insight and states of intimate connection to your inner world that your craft comes alive.
When you are intimately connected to your emotions’ texture, nuance, and depth, it comes through your art. Your audience can feel the depth of your feeling, and your work truly speaks to their hearts.
Thanks to the expression of pure emotion, others can find a piece of themselves in your art. When art comes from an intimate connection to your internal world, the people who witness it can feel seen, heard, or validated. They are transformed when you share your own experience of transformation.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to find and maintain this connection with your emotions and convey them in your art. Unhealed emotional trauma, unconscious conflicts, and unhealthy defensive strategies that you may have developed to cope with life’s challenges can all interfere with your creativity.
When you hit a creative block or a prolonged dry spell, you may find yourself wondering: “Why do my emotions mess up my creativity?”
Many times, unprocessed trauma causes your emotions to feel too intense, overwhelming, or painful. You can’t stay present with such feelings and you disconnect from your own inner emotional world. You may feel like you can only tiptoe around the edges of your experience, but can never go too deep. You keep a safe distance from your own emotional experiences. It doesn’t seem possible to tap into the depth and beauty of your emotions and use them to further your creativity.
This inability to engage your emotions and go deep are all signs that you may need to do some emotional work to help you process trauma, conflicts, or defenses that are locking you out of your emotional creative space.
If you’re someone who feels comfortable in your inner creative world some of the time but then loses touch with that place at other times, you may find yourself confused and looking for answers. You may be grieving the loss of your creativity since it has been so long since you were able to access your creative emotional space.
To reconnect to your creativity, you need to do your own inner healing work. Your current struggles are a sign that emotional trauma from your past needs to be examined, processed, and integrated.
How can doing your “emotional work” help you regain your creativity?
When you do your emotional work to heal old conflicts and trauma, you can access the full spectrum of your emotions and use them to enhance your art. You can remove the barriers to creativity and find that you can organically enter your artistic flow.
Thanks to the healing process, the “emotional work” you can do with a trained psychotherapist, you can connect with all that you are. Your emotions, talents, and skills can come together and you can express yourself and you trust your creativity.
The creative brain is unique, and that is why therapy for creative people needs to be sensitive to your specific needs.
Creative people have greater connections between two areas of the brain that are typically at odds with one another. The brain regions associated with focus and the brain network of regions associated with imagination, spontaneity, and emotions are in conversation in the creative brain.
Unfortunately, these connections usually tend to be impaired by unhealed trauma. Psychotherapy can help you reconnect these parts of your brain so you can regain your creativity and discover new creative energy.
When creative people commit to doing their emotional work, they develop their ability to stay in complex and even seemingly incompatible states of being. In other words, they can access the messiness of their minds and human experience with more comfort, ease, and focus. They can really dive into their old and present emotional experiences and internal world to create.
What kind of psychotherapy would help you?
There is no cookie-cutter treatment plan for creatives with emotional trauma. The treatment is a creative journey in itself. Together, we enter a meaningful process uniquely crafted to help you get in touch with your life experiences and reconnect you with your own artistic voice and expression.
When you process the emotional trauma and conflicts you will feel: “My creativity is the core of who I am. My past struggles do not define me. My past can inform what I create, but is not the core of who I am.”
That shift will help you stay intimately connected with your emotional world to make your authentic art that will touch audiences and, in some way either great or small, transform our world.
I am Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Doctor in Clinical Psychology. I help creatives face and shift emotional trauma, depression, anxiety, performance anxiety, creative blocks, and addictions – to be and live their own best version. You can read more about Therapy for Creatives and Performershere.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for a different kind of playground for creativity, innovation and inspiring stuff.
There will be a cloud of creativity lurking over the advertising center of northeast Arkansas tomorrow when the AAF chapter of Northeast Arkansas hosts Expanding Your Toolbelt, a series of afternoon workshop sessions covering a variety of topics relative to advertising and creativity.
Projected schedule:
Lunch & Session 1: 11:30 am – 1:00 pm | Take This Job and #^*& with Anissa Centers This workshop is about investing in what it takes to excel in your field, even when you are no longer motivated.
Session 2: 1:00 – 2:00 | Digital Drawing Workshop with Whitney Blackburn Take some time to learn a new skill that you can utilize in your professional or personal time. Learn all the ins and outs of digital drawing.
Session 3: 2:00 – 3:00 | Kickstarting Creativity Without Screwing Up the Idea with Joe Fournet Creativity plays a vital role in getting the consumer’s attention, no matter the size of one’s budget or what it is a company is selling to the public. Joe’s presentation has some fun showcasing winning and wacky ways to kick-start the creative process while staying true to the core ideas.
Session 4: 3:00 – 4:00 | Leadership Lessons From the Lockdown with AAF National President, Steve Pacheco From handling crises to navigating new channels of communication and connecting with your team, advice, and tips from lessons learned during lockdown.
Session 5: 4:00 – 5:00 | Curiosity with Professor Leslie Moore Parker This session helps identify the self-imposed constraints that may hold us back in our careers and lives. It encourages participants to open their minds and hearts to the unexpected and the outrageous.
I am honored to be a part of this elite panel of speakers and some of the highlights of Kick Starting can be found in the Download section of my website at the link below.
For those of you who can’t make the virtual visit, feel free to download a couple of documents I’ve posted on my website relative to various tips and techniques to enhance and develop the creative process. You’ll find them here at ideasnmore.net as well as other helpful information.
Organizations like the AAF are wonderful resources for professionals interested in joining with other like-minded peers in the advertising and marketing spheres. Various chapters like this one in northeast Arkansas, and mine in Houston, serve the local advertising and creative community and make it worthwhile to become a member and strengthen one’s career and life interests.
Hope you can join us tomorrow either in-person or virtually. I think you’ll be glad you did!
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for a different kind of playground for creativity, innovation and inspiring stuff.
I don’t know how Seth Godin does it. He writes and publishes a blog everyday, 365 days a year. I have trouble publishing my two blogs each WEEK!
Part of my problem is having something interesting to publish. That is every blogger’s nightmare. There have been times I write a blog the night before because I came up with an idea and just developed it.
When I’m in a pinch and nothing comes to mind, I try and change my focus. In a way, I let myself become distracted, not by merely doing something else but by switching creative gears and concentrating on another creative project.
It was where my muse wanted to take me, so I let it. What is a muse you might ask?
Muse, in Greco-Roman religion and mythology, any of a group of sister goddesses of obscure but ancient origin, the chief centre of whose cult was Mount Helicon in Boeotia, Greece. They were born in Pieria, at the foot of Mount Olympus.
They probably were originally the patron goddesses of poets (who in early times were also musicians, providing their own accompaniments), although later their range was extended to include all liberal arts and sciences—hence, their connection with such institutions as the Museum (Mouseion, seat of the Muses) at Alexandria, Egypt. There were nine Muses as early as Homer’sOdyssey, and Homer invokes either a Muse or the Muses collectively from time to time.
Virgil (centre) holding a scroll with a quotation from the Aeneid, with the epic Muse (left) and the tragic Muse (right), Roman mosaic, 2nd–3rd century ad. Courtesy of the Musée Le Bardo, Tunis
As the creative juices begin to flow and my “new” project begins to take shape, I begin to develop several ideas that would make for interesting blog posts. I did, however, make sure I finished what I had previously started so I could “celebrate” the accomplishment (a musical slide show).
Whether or not you follow your instincts when you have a calling to do so, is up to you. Your mind and imagination are wondrous tools in the creative process. Don’t ignore them.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for a different kind of playground for creativity, innovation and inspiring stuff.
ideasnmoreblog 