A Year of Procrastination: Day 1

A copywriter procrastinates What's my creative project for the year? Simply to document my creative procrastination. (Let's just call it creative crosstraining – sketchnotes, illustrations, photos, and the occasional fold.) As an interactive copywriter, sometimes I do everything but write. So this is a formal documentation of those creative meanderings. But often, I find the answer I am looking for in my doodles rather than within the linear thought patterns of writing.

Can you accomplish a lot in 5 or 15 minutes? Not always. But after 365 days, there's quite a body of work.

The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life. – Jessica Hische

Sketchnotes from Interactive Day San Diego

Well, Interactive Day San Diego keeps growing with over 800 people attending this year. In my continuing exploration of how to blog an event without writing, I did more sketchnotes.

I attended two session on mobile marketing that dovetailed nicely with each other.

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Then after lunch it was more creative territory. Yay! ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ Of course, by happy hour I was no longer sketching.

What Luke Skywalker taught me about the big idea.

This spring Star War Episode 1:  The Phantom Menace was back on the silver screen in 3-D. So after watching Phantom Menace, I ended up watching Episode 4: A New Home within the same week. Comparing the plotlines of the two movies got me thinking about the importance of the big idea when telling a story. (Whether you should begin with the prequels or original triology is a whole other blog post.)

The original Star Wars, A New Hope, is a classic story of good vs evil. We follow the quest of young Luke as he grows as a young man.  The end of the movie is an adrenaline rush as we watch Luke and the other pilots make the assault on the Death Star and blow it up.

Contrast this with the ending of Episode 1 The Phantom Menace. Who are we rooting for? Well to start with we have the froggish Jar Jar Binks leading the Gungans into battle against the Trade Federation battle droids.

Then we have Princess Amidala  leading the capture of the palace.

Dames with guns are hot. Espcecially in Episode 2 when they wear ripped white spandex jumpsuits.

Anakin ends up in the sky and blows up the control ship thus disabling all the droids.

And finally, Qui-gon Jinn and Obi-wan Kenobi  battle Darth Maul.

Did you get that? Now imagine if this was a marketing campaign. With A New Hope, you can name who the hero is – Luke Skywalker.

Now quick, who's the hero of the Phantom Menace?

If you stuff too many details in your messaging people end up remembering nothing.

Live long and prosper.

May the Force be with you.

What it takes to be a dream client.

Lee Clow, the creative mastermind behind Apple's Think Different commercials wrote this of Steve Jobs when he passed away: He was the most amazing person I have ever known. He was a genius. He was an innovator. He was the best client we ever had.

A new article in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell suggests that Steve wasn't the true innovator. He was actually a tweaker. He know how to encourage, influence or intimidate people to create what it took to fulfill his

vision of the perfect product.

That wasn't always the smoothest process. An exchange between Steve and VIncent, the copywriter on the first iPad commercials.

“Well, what do you want?” Vincent shot back. “You’ve not been able to tell me what you want.”

“I don’t know,” Jobs said. “You have to bring me something new. Nothing you’ve shown me is even close.” Vincent argued back and suddenly Jobs went ballistic. “He just started screaming at me,” Vincent recalled. Vincent could be volatile himself, and the volleys escalated.

When Vincent shouted, “You’ve got to tell me what you want,” Jobs shot back, “You’ve got to show me some stuff, and I’ll know it when I see it.”

I'll know when I see it.