Stirring it up

I came across an interesting project from Publicis Mojo, Sydney, in this month's Creative Review. The poster project, entitled Words To Work By, is the first of a series of self-initiated projects that will see the agency link up and work with various different artists and designers…

It's great to see an agency encourage collaborative projects that are independent of budget and advertising parameters. Like Google's 20% innovation time-off, setting aside more time for projects (a la Green Thing), whether for social good or self-promotional marketing, can serve as a creative outlet that animates people internally and projects the right image of the agency to potential and prospective clients.

It's been said that creativity will help the industry recover from financial turmoil, which of course means different things to different people (at a recent meeting, my ears perked up when our CFO said that creative solutions would be key, only to discover he meant 'innovative' cost-savings).

But ultimately, creativity is about finding a new or different way to do or see things to solve problems/overcome challenges. Wikipedia defines creativity as a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts.

Sounds like just want will get us out of the ditch. And we might as well have fun while we get dirt under our nails.

Are you working on any independent projects in the office?