The Context: It's 2018, and every gamer, entertainer, artist, chef, podcast junky, Insta and Finsta model, and basically anyone else that owns a mobile phone are considered "creators." Practically every client asks to help generate new creative ideas, so I thought it would be beneficial to first understand how creativity works.
First, it's important to understand why we create and how we perceive creativity in our society. As depicted in Figure 1, people try to prove to themselves and to the world that they are worthy. It makes them feel good.
However, being creative in today's world is becoming harder than ever. Everyone's a creator; YouTubers, memers, app-makers, Instagrammers, etc. Yet, while many of us take pride in thinking of funny captions or editing videos, most of us are actually just replicating content that's similar to what we've seen before. Figure 2 explains the increasing threshold of uniqueness and the value of creativity in our everyday lives.
Ironically, everyone strives to be unique, yet the cultural tribes that we belong to all facilitate ways to bring our individuality to life. Below are some mood-board examples we designed to show how creativity lives on social.
We also created mood boards that showed how people create within different micro-communities in various cultural silos. Specifically, we dove into Beauty, Fashion, Food, Comedy, Travel, and Sports & Entertainment, respectively, as shown below.
While most things people create are products of imitation, they will go to extreme lengths to prove that their creativity (which is increasingly becoming increasingly intertwined with their identities) is authentic. As brands and as advertisers, it is our job to work with these silos shown above, and help alleviate the hardship of embracing individuality in a sea of sameness.