Podcast Summary

Kiran Kapur, the host of the Cambridge Marketing Podcast, addressed a listener's question about how to consistently generate ideas for content. The host reframed the question as a broader challenge of maintaining consistent creativity. They presented a series of strategies gathered from creative professionals and experts. Key advice included overcoming the fear of starting, adhering to strict deadlines to structure creative work, and clearly defining the purpose and strategy behind any content before its creation. The episode featured insights from experts Martin Talks on strategy, Dr. David Hall on the definition of creativity versus innovation, and Rob Watson on the importance of one's environment. The host concluded by emphasising that creativity stems from deliberately connecting diverse experiences and inputs, rather than from unstructured brainstorming.

Key Points

  • The challenge of creating weekly content was identified not as a podcasting issue, but as a matter of consistent creativity.
  • A primary piece of advice was to overcome the fear of not having enough ideas and to commit to starting, as the act of starting fosters a creative mindset.
  • Having firm, non-negotiable deadlines was presented as a crucial tool for structuring the week and forcing creative output.
  • It was argued that understanding the purpose and strategy of content is more vital than the execution, with Martin Talks suggesting 90% of time should be spent on the "why."
  • Creativity was defined by Dr. David Hall as the generation of ideas that are both novel and useful, distinct from innovation, which is the implementation of those ideas.
  • The physical environment was highlighted as a key factor in creativity; changing surroundings, such as working from a coffee shop or walking, can spark new ideas.
  • Consuming diverse, long-form content and having varied life experiences were deemed essential for providing more "dots to connect," leading to more original and effective creative solutions.

 

Podcast Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated. 

 

Announcer (00:01):
The Cambridge Marketing Podcast with Kiran Kapur, brought to you by Cambridge Marketing College. See their range of courses and apprenticeships at marketingcollege.com.

Kiran Kapur, host (00:11):
Hello and welcome, this week, another listener's question.

Listener (00:17):
"I listen to a lot of podcasts, including yours. How do podcasters keep the ideas coming every week?"

Kiran Kapur, host (00:22):
So firstly, thank you for the question. Now, I'm regularly asked about how to do podcasts, why to do podcasts, and how to become a guest on a podcast. And we've covered all these topics in the past. However, this question was slightly different because it's not actually about podcasting. It's about creating ideas consistently. We've all done the new year's resolutions. I must do more.... LinkedIn posts, blogs, think pieces, create a podcast. And I'm guessing this listener perhaps has one of those new year's resolutions. And so some of us will start off in January and we will do more posts, more blogs. We will start a podcast. And then other priorities come along, we lose the impetus. And what we've actually lost is that ability to create ideas consistently. So I've asked some consistently creative people what they did and if they had any advice. And the first advice was just don't be scared.

(01:24):
Too many people think they just won't be able to come up with ideas regularly, so they don't even start. Actually, starting and committing seems to be one of the first ways to get yourself into that creative frame of mind. The second one was very definitely, have a deadline. I asked my in- house creative who's tasked with creating a social media post every single day. And she knows that she can plan some beforehand, and she can batch them up, but the deadlines don't move. Every day there has to be a social media post. And by having that deadline, she finds that helps her to work towards it. I obviously have a deadline twice a week for a podcast. I also have other training that I do on a regular basis. By just knowing that those deadlines are there, it structures my week to make certain that I am creative and ready for that moment.

(02:14):
Thirdly, it really helps to understand what you are trying to achieve. So Martin Talks of Martintalks.com is very clear that this helps the thought process.

Martin Talks, Martintalks.com (02:26):
I think people probably spend too long worrying about the execution and not enough time worrying about exactly what the purpose of that video is, and what the strategy behind that video is, or that content, or any content is. So I think people forget that they seem to focus mostly on the delivery part.

Kiran Kapur, host (02:43):
That's interesting. So you would always advise people taking a step back and say, where are we going with this? What's the point of it?

Martin Talks, Martintalks.com (02:49):
Yeah, 90% of the time on the question and 10% on the answer really, is what I would be saying. So otherwise you get ... I think that's a bit of a rip off of a quote from Albert Einstein, but I think it's so true. The question needs to be correctly posed. Otherwise, people may be surprised they don't get enough views, enough visits, enough, whatever, that they're looking to achieve. And that's often because they haven't really thought enough about what the purpose of that content is and how it's going to work and why it's going to be interesting to people.

Kiran Kapur, host (03:19):
Sometimes that also means understanding why you don't achieve. For example, I personally don't do that weekly LinkedIn post, despite having had it as a New Year's resolution for at least the past five years. Why? Because it just isn't as important to me personally as doing my podcasting. So I've learnt to deprioritise the writing and prioritise my creativity in other directions. So what actually is creativity? Dr. David Hall, who's a creativity expert, gave a very, very clear description of this.

Dr David Hall, creativity expert (03:57):
Creativity is simply the process of generating ideas that are both novel. In other words, hadn't thought of that before and useful, in that you can see how to make that novel idea work. So it's generating ideas. It's the ideation process and it's all about that combination of novelty and usefulness. Whereas innovation is the implementation thing. It's the doing thing. It's taking that creative idea and implementing it to give you a step function change in the organisational context. So big difference between the two. Creativity is all about idea generation and innovation is all about implementation.

Kiran Kapur, host (04:33):
And the late great Steve Jobs, head of Apple, had another way of describing it. He said creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it. They just saw something, and it seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they'd had and create new. There's a second part of that quote which we will come back to. Creativity is allowing yourself to look for things. It's helpful to have a structure. It's helpful to know that you've got to be creative. Somehow, that seems to generate the creative juices in some way. One of the other things that came up quite frequently when I spoke to people was considering your surroundings. For some people, they seem to need to be in the same space or a safe space, and they found that very helpful.

(05:27):
Other people found moving around helpful. Several mentioned having ideas when driving or going for a walk. And just simply changing your surroundings can help, as Rob Watson explains.

Rob Watson, College tutor (05:39):
In terms of creativity and coming up with ideas, I'm not necessarily talking about design and doing creative design yourself, but just coming up with content ideas. Quite often one of the biggest things is environment. So I've worked in marketing roles where you're tacked onto the sales department maybe as an afterthought, and you're sat in the middle of a call centre and you're trying to concentrate and be creative, and it just doesn't fit. And I think just doing little things around environment, like I've had team meetings in coffee shops, might be only once a month as a main team meeting or something, or having an outdoor going for a walk and thinking of ideas as well. I think you really have to think outside of the box just because you're one of the few people in a small company that whose job it is to actually be creative and come up with ideas.

Kiran Kapur, host (06:27):
Yes. You make this really good comment about don't worry about your non-marketing colleagues think.

Rob Watson, College tutor (06:33):
Yeah, exactly. And I think another side of it is just keeping your mind busy with ... I think it's absolutely legitimate in marketing too. I personally have always read a lot of books and longer form content, but if you want to keep up with things and ideas, it's really important to keep up with blogs and even YouTube and keeping up with informal information sources that way. It's absolutely crucial to staying creative.

Kiran Kapur, host (06:57):
And finally, I just wanted to come back to the second half of that quote. He's talking about creativity in the computer industry, but it applies to all industries. He says, lots of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences, so they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have. And for design, think creativity. So again, it's having those connections. It's looking for those connections. It's being open to being creative. Now, if you Google creativity, you will find an awful lot of things about keeping journals and going on creativity walks and making dates with your inner creative. And if those work for you, that's fine. But the creative people I spoke to were far more interested in coming up with regular creativity, s'and their advice was all around not being scared, having a deadline, having structure, but occasionally breaking out of that structure to give yourself some new ways.

(08:02):
None of that is about things like brainstorming or thought sharing. It's all about deliberately thinking, absorbing and making connections and having diverse input into your ideas. And finally, of course, for a podcast, often what you're also based on is you're looking for meeting people and having ideas for guests and ideas for other people's input, and that can be the same for any other creativity. So having networks and connections with people is incredibly important. So I hope that helped with the listener's question. I'm always open to answering your listener's questions. You can contact me by any of the social media for the Cambridge Marketing College. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll catch you next week.

Announcer (08:43):
The Cambridge Marketing Podcast from Cambridge Marketing College, training marketing and PR professionals across the globe.