What Kids Can Teach Us About Creativity

There’s no question that the most effective advertising has a simplicity and purity to
that makes us say, “Yes—of course!”

This is the same reaction I have when some two or three year old just knocks me over with an observation that is extremely fresh and revealing. But when they reach four, it doesn’t happen so much, and when they are adults it’s very rare, unless they are one of a few child-like creative directors of a big advertising agency.

What goes on here? Why are learning, growing up, and sophistication the enemies of clarity and creativity?

Why can my two year old daughter called the old game, “Hide and Sneak,” thereby imparting it with a dimension and truth that wouldn’t occur to us jaded adults. Why can she break the day into two parts---“Night Time” and “Light Time”? How can she invent a new product by remembering her dinner as being a “Grilled Ham and Cheeseburger”?

We are too cynical if we call these things happy accidents, or malaprops, of simply dismiss them as being a result of children’s imperfect understanding. Instead, we should try to learn their secret and see if it could help us solve our own communications problems.

Kids undoubtedly have a heightened awareness and sensitivity to the world around them. That happens to be a pretty good description of a poet or an artist as well----heightened awareness and sensitivity. Kids also have an eagerness to tell us and to share their impressions. Do we still have as much enthusiasm?

Kids have an advantage over us that we can’t overcome. They have a limited vocabulary, so they have to make do with the few words they know. As our education increases, so does our vocabulary and our ability to make fine distinctions by finding the precisely correct word.

We have a plethora of synonyms, and one might be slightly better than the last. But kids have no choice but to make a quantum leap—out of one category to another. Kids’ worlds are all one, all jumbled together. They can and must use one part of their lives in the context of another.

Our gurus call this lateral thinking, or thinking outside the box. To kids, it’s their world view. They connect everything; we stay in the comfort zone of our sophistication.

How would you and your brainstorming group go about naming, for example, a camera, a dairy drink, and a table on which diapers are changed? You would use logic. When that fails, you would develop great lists of synonyms, functional parts and relatives of creatures from Greek Mythology. As last resort you would settle on new coinages such as Sacravista, Quencharoo, and Lovebottoms.

My three year old son named them instinctively by assuming the name is what you say when the product is used.. The camera is a “Smile,” the drink is “Some More,” and the diaper table is a “Lie Down!” These might be lousy names in the marketplace, but they are clearer thinking than I could have brought to the exercise.

A good creative idea, like a good poem, isn’t whipped cream dolloped on top of chocolate cake. Instead it goes deep inside and you can taste the cocoa bean. A good definition of creativity is that it brings order out of chaos.

There’s nothing new under the sun, there are just new combinations. That is what kids do. From their ingenuousness springs the intuitive leap, the impeccably clear explanation of what’s going on. They are walking connections.

The girl pulled the drawer out of her dresser and it fell on her left foot. We asked if it also smacked her right foot. Through her tears she blurted out, “No. It looked out.” Could we have said it more graphically or concisely?

What they say about vacationing in North Dakota is also true about being a child: time takes a whole lot longer there. Adults move and think too fast, everything jumbles together, we can’t see. We carry too many memories and mental baggage, so we can no longer witness an event or have an experience for the first time. How can we be a child again and make each moment forever?

One way is to stop making distinctions and start making analogies. Stop analyzing, start experiencing. Be a far reaching generalist, not a narrow minded specialist. Slow down.

What might kids tell us who are in advertising or sales? Creativity is not an end for us, it’s a means. Good selling begins at the gut level, a primal contact with our prospect. That depends on how creatively we’ve chosen our words and images. Maybe we’d be better salesmen if we dust off our most precious heritage---that we were all kids once.

The poet Thomas Hood said it well----
I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high
I used to think their tender tops
Were close against the sky;
It was a childish ignorance
But now tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.