What's your creative process?

I don’t know about you but my mind always works better when I’m moving. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to sit still. That’s it, I’m happy to sit still …

My job entails a lot of sitting still, when I’m taking a client brief, interviewing a contact, carrying out an audit or market research, watching Silent Witness (I digress!) and of course writing the content. But when it comes to mulling things over, syphoning out the objectives, sifting through key messages and coming up with a compelling solution … I need to be moving. I’ve come to accept that this is my creative process.

I used to laugh when the Creative team at McCann Erickson used to quietly grab their coats and sheepishly disappear up King Street to “brainstorm” - we were only a hop, skip and a jump from the “Old Duke'“ pub after all - but perhaps in hindsight they had a point. It does take time for the mind to assimilate all the data and for good ideas to rise to the surface. It’s never easy, I genuinely love what I do, but it’s hard and I question whether I’ll be able to do every single job I win … until I’ve done it!

But, I find walking the dog or attempting to run (yuk, spit!) does wonders for oiling the cogs and focusing the mind on what the key issues are. Invariably by the time I’ve reached the end, the solution is staring me in the face and I’ve got the nugget of a great idea.

On the way back from a client meeting this morning I was listening to Paul Heaton (Beautiful South lead singer) talking about his song writing process, he said ‘I’ll be out on my bike or walking and it’ll come to me, either in bits or as a whole.” I found myself smiling and nodding along to the radio, seems I’m not the only one.

What’s your creative process?