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Creative Monopolies

By Peter Lloyd

Why in the world is the word creative monopolized by one department of the typical advertising agency. The creative department it's called. As if all the other departments are un-creative.

Come on now. We're talking about people who churn out what they themselves call "copy." And it's easy to understand why they call it copy.

An article in the Advertising Age supplement called (here they go again) "Creativity," listed example after example of ads that copy other ads. I'm sure it didn't take a lot of digging. No, I'm afraid that ad people are no more creative as a group than the general population. Creativity is found in all walks of life.

Some examples:

1. The Jesuit priest who turned around a dying university by taking the classroom to his students.
2. A federal judge who hears cases around a conference table in his street clothes.
3. An irate consumer who bills annoying telemarketers $100 a call, and collects.
4. A Wall Street executive who writes funny memos.
5. The food historian who can reveal your genealogy if you tell him what you ate for Thanksgiving dinner.
6. The magazine editor who models her management style after Daffy Duck and Catwoman.
7. The inventor of brightly colored Elmer's glue.

If you're in a profession where being creative is undervalued—like accounting, where it's considered a crime—you're in the perfect position to raise the level of creativity in your field.

You can get off to a flying start by, one, assuming that you are creative, and two, refusing to copy.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.