Creativity Archives - Page 4 of 4

Every marketer in Whoville likes Valentine’s a lot.
But this marketer from Whoville for some reason does not.
So instead of an email that ties into V-day, too,
Here’s how Chuck Jones sold the Grinch, and why it matters to you.

Let’s set the stage:

The year is 1962. Our main character is Charles Martin Jones, better known as Chuck Jones.

If you’ve ever watched Saturday morning cartoons before Cartoon Network came out, you probably know this name. Because Chuck Jones directed a bunch of the most famous Warner Brothers cartoons of all time, the ones with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.

In fact, when 1000 professional animators were asked to rank the 50 greatest cartoons of all time, Chuck Jones’s cartoons came in 10 times among the top 50… 4 times out of the top 5… and one, What’s Opera Doc?, took the number one spot.

But in 1962, that was all in the past. Because Jones was no longer at Warners, but was now at MGM. He was pushing to get a Christmas feature made, based on a book by his friend Ted Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.

There are lots of interesting details about How the Grinch Stole Christmas went from a book to a cartoon. But there’s only one bit that’s relevant for us today:

Once Jones created the storyboard for the cartoon, he had to go and sell it. Because in those days, you didn’t pitch a show to a network. Instead you had to find sponsors first. So Jones went around town, giving presentation after presentation of his storyboard for How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

But nobody wanted it. The cereal people… the chocolate people… the sea monkey people. They all said no.

All in all, Chuck Jones had to pitch the Grinch 25 times before an unlikely group — The Foundation for Commercial Banks — finally agreed to finance it.

And then, as you probably know, the Grinch cartoon became a huge success. It’s been playing every Christmas season ever since it came out. And Dr. Seuss’s book, which sold 5,000 copies before the cartoon — not bad for a kid’s book — started selling 50,000 copies a year once the cartoon came out, and never let up.

By now this might sound like a typical story of a sleeper hit, and of the Elmer Fudds who were too dumb to recognize it. And you know what? That’s exactly what it is, and why I’m telling it to you.

Because there are too many stories like this. Star Wars… Harry Potter… The Beatles. Giant hits to which the industry experts said no, no, no.

Did you ever ask yourself why?

You might think it’s the sclerosis of industry insiders… but something else is going on. And if you’re in the business of creating offers and you want them to become big hits, then this is relevant to you too. I’ll tell you the explanation I’ve found for this mysterious phenomenon in my email tomorrow.

After a month and a half in an empty coast town, I’m back in a city. So I put a note in my phone to write today’s post with the headline “Welcome to the jungle.” But my phone thought different. It changed it to “Welcome to the Jung” instead. Let’s see where that goes.

I recently read an article about psychologist Carl Jung. In his later days, Jung believed the universe is full of meaningful coincidences. He called this synchronicity. He gave an example:

During a therapy session, one of Jung’s patients was talking about her dream. She dreamt a golden beetle. Right then, Jung looked out his office window and spotted a golden beetle. Synchronicity.

Maybe you’re like me, and you don’t think the universe cares what you think or you do. Or that it’s sending you coded messages. Or setting up golden beetles to thrill and surprise you.

Even so, you can get a lot of use from taking chance events and running with them.

For example, some of my favorite creators — people like Brian Eno, David Lynch, Philip K. Dick — made randomness a key part of their work.

Philip K. Dick wrote The Man in the High Castle using I Ching divination. He used it to figure out where the plot should go.

David Lynch was shooting the pilot to Twin Peaks when a set dresser accidentally got in the frame. Lynch decided not to throw the take away. Instead he kept the set dresser in the show and made him the main villain, Bob.

And Brian Eno has a whole system for adding randomness to his work. It’s a set of cards called Oblique Strategies. You draw a card at random, and it gives you a hint about how to move forward with your project.

So here’s what I want to leave you with:

If you ever worry you won’t come up with good ideas, take the pressure off yourself.

Integrate some randomness into your process, and adapt. You will come up with better ideas than you could if you just lock your brain away in a room and tell it to work.

In other words, Jung’s synchronicity might not be real — but you can make it so.

Now how’s this for terms:

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