Why anchored creativity™? We polled our readership, asking for a preference between “disciplined creativity” and “disciplined imagination.” Oops. Both of them went down in flames. Upon reflection, rightly so.

“Discipline” brought out 50 Shades of Nay, and our perceptive readers wanted us to purge the negative connotations. (Proving once again that all of us are smarter than any of us.)

This little video tells the story.

Anchored Creativity is both succinct and accurate. It’s an expression of how we release the uplifting power of imaginative people. It’s how we explore new ways to connect to audiences.

Creative minds don’t process problems the same way butchers, bakers and candlestick makers do. It’s not a matter of technique or applied methods: creatives are just wired differently. They dream differently. Engineers and accountants (some of whom are creative in their field) can apply tested processes to get to solutions; top creatives take a left turn off the process path. Their imaginations find refreshing new ways to show and tell. They succeed best, IMHO, when they’re strategically anchored. Un-anchored creative efforts, as we recently pointed out in a blog post, lead to playful but unproductive  brand linkage failures.

Our agency believes in imagination, yes, great storytelling, yes, but always anchored to sound strategies. We want our clients’ brands to be disruptive, of course. To blend in is to be invisible. We want brands to live at the intersection of Surprise and Delight (a great nice-place-to-raise-kids neighborhood). But we never forget the practical outcome that the strategy is aiming for. It’s good to be water cooler talk, it’s better to move the needle.

Magic + Logic. Art + Science. Intuition + Insight.

Both hemispheres of the brain get involved in the Anchored Creativity process, and get used to their best advantage. Fill the tank with information, load up on actionable research, dig in to consumer insights, put together a powerful Creative Brief. All that structure is needed to build a launch pad for the right-brained dreamers.

Tie a ribbon to the balloon; let it rise. That mild restraint, that anchor, keeps it from floating away, and optimizes the message. It’s not a new methodology, or a proprietary process. It’s tried and true. Anchored Creativity is, however, a fresh way to express it, which explains why we put a ™  on it.

What do you think?