Lateral: Life

I did a 5 minute video for this post only to find out that the sound was mute when I played it back.





But that's fine because the video below sums up what I said in my video:


Life is this journey that starts with the pieces you are given, your parents. In some cases people don't start with their biological parents, some babies are dumped in a garbage can, others are adopted. But someway or the other, there's at least one other human being who leads our way. As we grow older we begin to discover more pieces, pieces of wisdom passed on from our loved ones, pieces of our own, pieces of knowledge, pieces of love, pieces of sadness, pieces of regret, pieces of rebirth. What happens when you have a plan that doesn't work out? That piece was missing in your jigsaw puzzle of life. Lateral thinking is a concept that goes beyond the smartest campaign or most creative idea. Applying this concept to life is just as good, if not better. The questions to ask yourself is, did that piece really exist? Is there one in front of me? Can I create a new piece? I'm beginning to appreciate the bigger picture, the piece that has it all.

Lateral: Tate Tracks

Last year I attended a course designed for aspiring account planners. In simple terms, account planners are advertising agency people who work to understand the consumer's view in order to create communication that resonates with them(the consumer). The discipline of planning has different approaches and it boils down to the agency culture and the type of planner working on any particular campaign.

So back to my story. Each week, I hopped from one agency to the other (we had our seminars in  different agencies) gathering knowledge from a diverse range of planning directors. In each seminar, we were presented with at least one campaign from the hosting agency. What has any of this got to do with lateral thinking? (If by now you cannot tell that I like to provide background information, now you know :)

One campaign that stood out to me was a campaign for Tate Modern by Fallon. The video below sums up the idea behind campaign idea, Tate Tracks:

Just to give you some background information, Tate Modern had some success drawing in that audience but they struggled to keep them. The reason why this campaign gets a mention today(a highly honorable feat if I say so myself) is that the thinking behind it provided a long term benefit. We all know that music plays an integral role in the life of the audience they were looking at (Tate Modern used music in their previous attempt) but Tate Tracks went the extra mile by getting into the heads of the musicians. The question asked wasn't (only) "How do we get the consumers attention?" but "What do they consider as art?" "How do they contribute to art?"

"Lateral thinking is concerned not with playing with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces" (SOURCE). The campaign changed traditional art by tapping into the inspiration it provided to musicians.

Lateral Fridays

Depending on the way you look at it, Friday either signals the end or the beginning.  Is it the end of an awesome work week? or the beginning of a horrifying weekend? Our topic today is about changing our perceptions to explore alternate posibilities. It's about recognizing our pattern of thinking and removing barriers in order to tap into our creative spirit. Here's a video from the mastermind behind the concept of Lateral Thinking: Edward De Bono.

Lateral thinking is an area of interest for me because it opens doors that we never even knew existed. Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?

Here are two examples of lateral thinking:

If you haven't already watched Valentine's Day, I thoroughly recommend it. Not only is it a funny movie but the unexpected relationships and individual story resolutions make the plot a very good example of lateral thinking at work. I personally think that the art of writing (whether writing scripts for movies, TV shows or non-fiction books) involves a lot of lateral thinking because writers tend to play with our preconceived notions to produce twisted resolutions that make us love the shows, movies and books that we do.

Another example is by LoveJozi, a T-shirt company based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

If you can't beat the competition, join become 'em. (:

Have a great weekend!