Inside PR 494: Creativity and Long Bike Rides by the Lake

• • Show Notes

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A recent post by Gini Dietrich on Digital Distraction and Creativity provides our jumping off point this week. We talk about he importance of times when our minds are “in neutral” for creative thinking and serendipitous inspiration. For Gini, it’s long bike rides. For Martin, it’s long walks. For Joe, it’s shaving and the shower. It may be something totally different for you. But whatever it is, it’s important that you make time to enable your mind to free associate and generate new ideas.

Just a couple years ago, Canada’s Antispam Law (CASL) forced marketers everywhere to revise their approach to building mailing lists, as marketers everywhere discovered that, if they captured any  Canadians in their lists, they had to clearly indicate the intended use of the data and provide people with a clear opt-in for the list, not an opt-out.  And failure to comply with these standards could lead to legal action and fines.

Now publishers and marketers around the world are gearing up for Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which compels a similar rethink about the way that data about people is collected, including cookie data. And, similar to CASL, living outside of Europe is not a shield against the regulation. It’s effect and the truly sizeable financial penalties that can be levied against those who violate the regulation can be applied to anyone anywhere if the capture data about Europeans.

Finally, we discuss research from Pew that underlines the relentless erosion of television news consumption, that is leaving it as a medium consumed by older, less educated, less wealthy Americans. No wonder I see so many drug ads on CNN! And this trend leaves PR people scrambling to reach audiences in the new online places they habituate.

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Joseph Thornley.

Creative Commons Licence
Inside PR 494 by Joseph Thornley, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Inside PR 3.44: Getting Creative at South by Southwest V2V

• • Inside PR

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This week, we’ve got a special episode of Inside PR live from the South by Southwest V2V conference in Las Vegas. OK, live to digital audio.

Just before we recorded, I’d attended a high energy and insightful panel on creativity and brainstorming and invited the panelists to continue the discussion on the show.

Note: We’re in one of the speaker lounges so apologies for the sound quality and background noise. Next time, I’ll travel with my portable IPR studio, that is, I’ll find a quieter spot.

Our guests are:
Helen Todd, co-founder and CEO, Sociality Squared
Adam Marelli, artist and photographer based in NYC
Jim Hopkinson, fellow podcaster at the Hopkinson Report, author and principal of Hopkinson Creative Media
Jey Van-Sharp, business strategist and market analyst/editor at My Uber Life

Here are some highlights of our conversation:

Adam Marelli says one of the best pieces of advice he ever received on creativity came from a Zen monk who said do just one thing at a time. For Adam, no matter how long the to-do list becomes, he finds he’s most creative if he focuses on a specific task without distractions.

For Jey Van-Sharp, it’s all about prioritizing your priorities. He starts by thinking of the objective as a big boulder you can’t move very easily. Then he breaks it into smaller rocks and easy to handle pebbles, with each pebble being one task. Each day he picks several tasks to work on, knowing he can’t get through them all at once, but will accomplish the project over time.

Jim Hopkinson believes you should really know yourself and references a Paul Graham post on maker’s and manger’s schedules and how the two are often in opposition. Being creative means being a maker and it’s important to find clumps of uninterrupted time for your work.

Helen Todd agrees you need to block off periods during your day to cultivate your ideas. Her advice: avoid productive procrastination – where you work on administrative projects or answering emails because it makes you feel productive, when you should be focusing on the creative challenge at hand.

Final word goes to Adam who says, there’s an art to failure and you get there by practicing it; the separation between failure and success is very thin.

Do you consider yourself creative or in a creative job? What challenges do you have coming up with fresh ideas? Is creativity something you live and breathe or do you try to compartmentalize it? Any tips you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you.

You may also be interested in the interview we did with Festival producer Christine Auten.

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Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the Inside PR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Kristine Simpson and Ashlea LeCompte.

Inside PR #115 – Wednesday, June 11, 2008

• • Awards, Comments, Inside PR, New Business Development, PR, Show Notes

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Comments? Send us an email at [email protected], call us on the comment line on 206-600-4741, visit the Inside PR Blubrry site, or leave us a comment on the Inside PR show blog.

This week on Inside PR, Terry Fallis, Keith McArthur and Julie Rusciolelli and discuss creativity in pitching new business.

Show Notes

00:34 Terry opens the show

01:31 The panel talks about their weekends. Terry tells us about the Leacock Medal ceremony and about getting the TD Bank Comfort zone seats at last Sunday’s Blue Jays game.

02:50 Terry talks about Third Tuesday’s in June across Canada. He asks listeners to check out Joseph Thornley’s Blog at propr.ca

03:51 Terry plugs Podcasters Across Borders

06:18 Keith Talks about CMA’s word of mouth marketing Conference: Mass to Grass

07:23 Julie talks about her participation in Luminato

09:42 Terry introduces the main topic of discussion: creativity in pitching new business

11:06 Julie talks about some tricks Maverick uses

16:38 Keith talks about a three stage process Veritas went through to pitch a client

19:59 Terry shares experiences in pitching Travelocity and Charles Schwab Canada

23:36 Julie shows that experience and credentials won’t necessarily get you the win

25:28 Terry talks about the importance of connecting with a client and how important chemistry is

28:13 Terry describes TFC‘s Molson pitch and building a train set in the board room

30:32 Terry reads the comment from John Unkart of Michigan, USA

31:49 Julie, Keith and Terry respond

34:42 Terry closes up the show

Our theme music is Streetwalker by Cjacks and is courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network; Roger Dey is our announcer.

This week’s episode was produced by Samantha Lovelace.