5 UN-Creative Thoughts About Creativity
By. Dan Kennedy
Part 2 of 5

#2: WORK BACKWARDS

Most people approach creative thinking from the front-the idea. Let’s say you’re going to open up a new restaurant. You’ll probably start with the name, maybe the theme, the menu. But the best place to start is with what will insure a customer keeps coming back. Or his final few minutes in the place. What goes on at the cash register. What will create the highest average ticket. In short, you start thinking about outcomes and then build backwards. Right now, in the movie business , a ton of very important money comes from stealth advertising and product placement. So very, very, very early in the creative process, in many cases prior to script and definitely prior to picking actors, the list of every possible product/advertiser that can be integrated into the film is thought through. I am told that in one blockbuster movie of 2005, a scene that took place inside a ski resort’s dim-lit bar at night in the book was moved to daytime, outside on the restaurant’s deck because they could get a sunglasses company, a parka company, and a liquor company with its name on patio table umbrellas to pony up money.