disruptive perception

06.18.13

Disruptive perception

Section 1 Creativity & imagination

Section 2 Perception

Section 3 5 ways to disrupt perceptionImmersionChallenge conformityNoveltyInvite constraintDisparate pairings

Hello,

Let’s chat

CREATIVITY & IMAGINATION

Creativity & imaginationThis is at the heart of our work

Our work is the output of our imaginations

Our success and the success we drive for our clients is directly linked to our ability to be creative

Creativity & imagination

No one would argue with this

This is not controversial

We get hired for our ability to be creative, to think generatively

Our ability to apply creativity to solve problems and create business opportunities

Creativity & imaginationBut if you believe in the power of creativity and imagination, and if you want to constantly challenge yourself and your organization to be ever more creative and innovative, then you must think about and challenge your perceptual capabilities

All creativity and imagination begins with perception

Make no mistake

PERCEPTION

“Perception lies at the root of all creativity, learning how to see is the start of creative thinking.”Source: Edward Prince Furniture Design: How to Be More Creative - Perception

But how you perceive something isn’t simply a product of what your eyes and ears carry to your brain, it’s a product of your brain itself

“Perception imagination

are linked because the brain uses the same neural circuits for both functions.”Source: Fast Company: “Neuroscience Sheds New Light on Creativity.”

The conscious mental registration of a sensory stimulus

What is perception?

Recognition & interpretation of sensory stimuli based chiefly on memory

What is perception?

Perception

Experience modifies perception because it modifies neural connections

The more experience we have with something, the more efficient our brains become at processing information

Perception

Neuroscientists have observed that while an entire network of neurons might process a stimulus initially, by about the sixth presentation, the heavy li!ing is performed by only a subset of neurons. Because fewer neurons are being used, the network becomes more efficient at carrying out its function.

Source: Fast Company: “Neuroscience Sheds New Light on Creativity.”

Humans tend to form whole perceptions from partial images

This is part of our natural ability to quickly interpret limited information, an ability essential to making the snap judgments needed to get through life

At times, however, the filled in information is illusory, a product of the mind not reality.

This mental extrapolation is a great intellectual skill

Vision is not the same as perception

Vision is concrete

Observational versus judgmental

Perception is how we ascribe meaning to what we see

We have to interpret what’s around us & o!en our unique interpretation can lead to distinctive ideas

Our unique perceptions of the world are in large part what differentiates us from each other

Eliminate all perceptive differences & the individual is more or less obsolete

Vision is not the same as perception

But at times, our brains move to judgement so quickly, we can miss seeing what is truly there

Vision is not the same as perception

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”Marcel Proust

The ideal of seeing with new eyes is merely a mental pause button...

Disruptive perception

conscious inefficiency, or said another way...

Disruptive perception

Perception

A very basic rule of perception says that you will perceive something in a way that is consistent with your prior experience

Once a perspective has been adopted, it is rare that new lines of thought are opened.

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”Henri Bergson

This doesn’t bode well for creativity and creative solutions

The challenge is to look at old problems in new ways

Most problems are not new

In our business, we have to be able to see new things, new opportunities in existing landscapes

“Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought.”

Albert Einstein said

“Iconoclasts see things differently than other people. Literally. They see things differently because their brains do not fall into the efficiency traps as much as the average person's brain. Iconoclasts, either because they were born that way or because they learned how to do it, have found ways to work around the perceptual shortcuts that plague other people.”

Iconoclastic perception

Gregory Berns, "Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently"

“Genius o!en comes from finding a new perspective that no one else has taken.”

Michael Michalko: “A Theory About Genius”

Habitual thinking is a drag on creativity

How do you disrupt your perception, shake up your attentional systems, fight habit and enhance your creative abilities?

Disruptive perception

5 WAYS TO DISRUPT PERCEPTION

1 Immersion2 Challenge conformity3 Novelty4 Invite constraint5 Disparate pairings

5 ways to disrupt perception

1 Immersion2 Challenge conformity3 Novelty4 Invite constraint5 Disparate pairings

5 ways to disrupt perception

You must break free of what you think you know to be true

We have set ways of viewing the world and we are experts at si!ing out information to the contrary

Immersion

The cure for this automated thinking is doing

Experiencing things, seeing things first hand

What activities or information might directly confront your implicit or explicit assumptions?

Immersion

Probably something outside the office field trips, store checks...

Go outside

Immersion Empathy is good. Imagine or experience things not as yourself but as someone else.

Talk to consumers not just behind the glass of a two-way mirror, but experience their habits and rituals with them.

Experience the products and services of competitive and non-competitive companies. What can you learn?

Environmental immersionRenowned architect Frank Gehry wants his buildings to be experienced, not just admired. He deliberately breaks architectural conventions to create work that elicits an emotional reaction.

Vontz Center for Molecular Studies

“Cancer will be cured here because the building will make people think differently.” Frank Gehry, Architect

Immersion

1 Immersion2 Challenge conformity3 Novelty4 Invite constraint5 Disparate pairings

5 ways to disrupt perception

Challenge conformityEvery organization has its own culture, own methods, unchallenged assumptions, pivitol strategies and set way of “that’s the way we do things around here.”

Document and identify these core beliefs, sacred cows, and then challenge each one.

Or challenge yourself how you would think differently about the brand or category if we didn’t believe what we believe.

ROM barA need to be disruptive to get the brand back into the hearts of the nation.

Challenge conformity

The idea was to steal it, to wrench it away from the nation, to dress it in an overseas international flag, that of the states. The nation rebelled, asking “what have you done? You’ve given away our national asset here.”As such, that disruption, that desire to break conformity, had a fantastic effect.

ROM

As the campaign grew and grew and grew, the anger and the angst and the passion grew with it.

When the candy bar was then reclad in the flag of the nation, everybody loved it again and sales went through the roof.

But it was a brilliant piece of thinking because they challenged the conformity of the brand itself and about the idea of stereotyping nationality.

There is a very powerful emotion wrapped up in hating something. Hating is visceral. Hating is angry. Hating is disruptive. There is a real usefulness in the velocity and visceral nature of hating something if you want to change something.

Only working within a convention will get you back into the heartland of habit. And if you are in a habit, then you will do what was a bit like the last piece or a bit like the studio over the road from you.As an example, pick something pretty pedestrian, pretty mundane, and see what happens when you hate something associated to it.

Hate is good

Conventions of camping

Escape

Basic

Countryside

If you define what camping is, it’s probably based on three things; escapism, living a pretty basic life, and being in the countryside. So as a convention, if you hate one of those things, what happens? If you hate it so much you refuse to accept it within the conventions of camping?

Conventions of camping

Escape

Basic Glamping

CountrysideImage courtesy flickr user wicker-furnitureImage courtesy flickr user Donna Tomlinson

Glamping is the reinvention of camping. It sets the whole leisure and tourist industry back on fire. It is being outside but not having to do it in a rough, tough, ants in your sandwich type of way. So when you hate basic, you get to something not only more interesting but also a viable alternative.

Conventions of camping

Escape

Basic

Countryside

If you take out countryside, what you get is urban camping, a trend that started to catch on in Europe. Camp in a city.

IEA urban campingChallenge conformity

Because something was refused and taken out of the equation, it takes you to a really interesting place. You have to sacrifice; you have to be aggressive in the reduction of one of the core components of the brand or the activity. IEA has redefined a corner of what was otherwise a very static industry. Camping now, whether it be glamping or urban camping, is significantly reinvented.

Hövding invisible helmetChallenge conformity

Hövding challenged the norms of a crash helmet being a rigid structure that has been in play for years and years and years.

By challenging the conformity of the genre, they came up with a radically different, very important alternative.

1 Immersion2 Challenge conformity3 Novelty4 Invite constraint5 Disparate pairings

5 ways to disrupt perception

The networks that govern both perception and imagination are one in the same

As previously stated...

But they can be reprogrammed by deploying your attention differently

Our brain’s natural inclinations toward efficiency drive mech-anized behavior of perceptual shortcuts to save energy.

Perceiving things in the usual way requires little by way of energy.

1. NoveltyNovelty

To perceive things differently, we must fuel our brains with stuff it has not experienced before.

A novel stimulus jolts attentional systems.

Radical directly proportional to fresh insights.

“If you’re trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed.”Wall Street Journal: “How to be Creative” by Jonah Lehrer

Novelty can take many forms

Novelty can take many forms

New insights or look at existing research in new ways to drive new insights.

Novelty can take many forms

“Form teams with people with diverse thinking styles more likely to arrive at good decisions. Their diversity challenges each other’s habituated beliefs.”Daniel Goldman

Doing a new and unfamiliar activity

Novelty can take many forms

Novelty can take many forms

Exposure to new information

1 Immersion2 Challenge conformity3 Novelty4 Invite constraint5 Disparate pairings

5 ways to disrupt perception

Invite constraint

We o!en talk about white space and endless possibilities, but the truth is the creative process is borne of constraint.

“I suspect that the welcoming of constraints is,at bottom, the deepest secret of creativity.”David Gentleman: “The Invisible Grail”, 2003

You may no longer promote your product within your number one channel

You must triple the price of your brand

The #1 raw material in your product is no longer available

You may no longer use your brand’s primary equity color

You must cut the price of your brand in half

Your product now may be only be used by those under the age of 21

You may no longer use your brand name to sell your product or service

Invite constraint

“I suspect that the welcoming of constraints is, at bottom, the deepest secret of creativity.”

Douglas R. Hofstadter, scientist and polymath

Image Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars RoverNASA’s challenge was to safely land the Mars probe onto the surface of the planet. NASA had no problem getting to Mars or getting to the atmosphere, but the last 200 yards were actually the hardest.

How do you slow down and control descent onto the surface of the planet while controlling everything from mission control back on earth?

So for the marvelous technology that got us to Mars’ atmosphere, the last 200 yards was delivered by a winch, a mechanism that has been with us for centuries.

Sometimes, the answer is right there in front of you.

Invite constraints

Image Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

PreemLandor worked in Sweden with a petroleum retailer whose business was suffering quite significantly with the advent of the incoming big international petrol companies.

Through the segmentation process with them we discovered that half the audience had a series of unmet needs and was an audience that wasn’t being talked to whatsoever—the entire female population.

One of the things that people familiar with petrol retailers know is that you don’t make any money now on pumping gas; you make it in the C-stores. So if you do believe that you want to seriously attract the missing half of the audience, what do you do? You design for women, not men. That’s the constraint.

Invite constraints

PreemAs we worked back through the experience into the C-store, making it such that the dwell time for the typical female customer would be longer, purchases increased. (Sales went up 33% a!er the redesign)

Changes included taking all the porn off the top shelf of all the magazine racks, taking out all the donkey burgers, and putting in things which were much more suitable for food to take home for the family.

Outside, the pumps were better lit for ease and safety.

1 Immersion2 Challenge conformity3 Novelty4 Invite constraint5 Disparate pairings

5 ways to disrupt perception

Five most important skills for innovators:Harvard Business Review

Associating

Questioning

Observing

Experimenting

Networking

Most powerful overall driver of innovation is associating

Disparate pairings

Making connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, ideas, or categories

Associating:

O!en helpful to look at the best of the best at a certain thing and imagine how it might transform your company.

Get inspired by Amazon’s access to inventoryNordstrom’s approach to customer serviceDisney’s approach to experience management

Disparate pairings

Locks

Disparate pairings

=

Personal audio iPod

+Image courtesy wikimedia commons user Thegreenj

Jewelry Gin

Disparate pairings

+

Sports cars Whiskey

Disparate pairings

+

Drugstores Department stores

Disparate pairings

+

Images courtesy flickr user daxoneil

Image courtesy flickr user daxoneil Image courtesy flickr user Pauton Chung

London Olympics LogoDisparate pairings

Images courtesy flickr user Todd Huffman

NEED PERMISSION

Image courtesy flickr user TiwsImage courtesy flickr user tableatny

London 2012 OlympicsIn past years, there was a sense of conformity in how the different games and cities presented themselves.

It was the desire of the IOC to make the games a legacy for the young people of London and stay top of mind for the 6 relevant years. How do you engage them while staying true to traditional sporting values?

Wolff Olins adopted the code and language of the streets by using graffiti as an inspiration. The resulting design was disruptive and different, and demanded conversation.

Image courtesy flickr user Ben Sutherland

=+

Siberian AirlinesDisparate pairings

What do we do with Siberian Airways that can resonate with the new generation of Russia and their point of view?

The idea of freshness was brought in because typically, in and out of Russia, perceptions of travel were that it was a pretty grey experience. Actually it’s a pretty grey in a lot of places, but particularly Russia. So what can we do to add a sense of freshness and vitality to it?

And can we combine it with something which actually has a sense of style and modernity, some lifestyle that people would find attractive?

Siberian Airlines

Disparate pairings

If you put fresh and fashion together you end up with not Siberian Airlines, but S7—something that is absolutely bright and cheerful and fashionable and breaks the codes of the category.

Now they feel proud and walk with a strut that is more akin to being a lifestyle brand than just an airline brand. The lounges feel more like going into a boutique than they do just a furniture show room you tend to get in lounges these days.

S7

UKTVDisparate pairings

SOLIDARITY

Disparate pairings

=+

UKTV’s personality was defined as the “Imaginative Challenger,” which is already a paradox. How do you bring together an idea of “what if” and a wandering curious spirit with an emphatic sense of challenging the status quo and norm?

The resulting identity combines the opportunity of a cloud with strong, emphatic type. It is disruptive and challenging to the sector.

1 Immersion2 Challenge conformity3 Novelty4 Invite constraint5 Disparate pairings

5 ways to disrupt perception

Thank youLandor.com