Ready?
Here’s what you do:
STEP 1: Take your product (e.g., Thing 1).
STEP 2: Take something else, anything else (e.g., Thing 2).
(Drawing a blank here? Google “random noun generator” for help sourcing ideas. I do this all the time.)
STEP 3: Put Thing 1 and Thing 2 together in a flush way — a way that makes someone feel excitement or delight, curiosity or intrigue or levity.
If you do the last step well, you’ll have something new, something creative.
Creativity is 1 + 1 = 3.
Combining 2 or more things that don’t typically go together is an act of creativity, whether you’re making an ad or a poster or a sculpture or an app or dinner or anything else.
(It's really that uncomplicated.)
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P.S.
STEP 1 and STEP 2 should be fun and relatively easy (i.e., the creative brainstorming).
STEP 3 is less fun and significantly harder (i.e., the creative work).
P.P.S.
Great TV commercials are almost always the product of 1 + 1 = 3 work.
A few examples from this past Super Bowl:
Cheetos + MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”
Reeses Take 5 bars + common idioms
Little Caesars + sliced bread
A few more:
Doritos + cowboys
Walmart + space
WeatherTech + dogs
What’s your favorite 1 + 1 = 3 ad?
Feel free to post it in the comments on LinkedIn.
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Judge not lest ye be judged.