Sir John Hegarty is one of Britain’s leading creative minds. (How many ad men can you name who were knighted?)

In a recent interview, he talked about how creative teams inspire each other – but he could just as easily have been talking about Harold teams:

“Bill Bernbach, back in 1959 or ’60, whenever he did it, he put an art director and a writer together. He put two different kinds of brains together. That was so fundamentally important. It wasn’t just that they were two people; it was he put two different types of people together. And those people rub up against each other.

As I say to the teams here, ‘Look, don’t switch on the computer in the morning. Switch on that person sitting next to you. Because you will have a unique conversation. Nobody in the world is gonna have the conversation that you’re going to now have. And out of that conversation will come things.’

So inspiration will come from what you’ve done, what you’ve seen, what you’ve looked at, what you did over the weekend, what you saw last night. When you were walking home you saw this, that was funny, you did that, you saw that, you heard that person say this… All of those things become part of your vocabulary as a creative person.

And if you’re not doing that, if you’re not going to art galleries, you’re not reading books, you’re not reading magazines, you’re not going to the movies, you’re not picking up on all this stuff that’s out there…you’re depleting your creative assets. You’ve got to keep feeding them all the time.”

Talking with your teammates is a way to bond, and a quick pre-show chat will often add colour and specificity to your set when the things you talked about find their way into a scene.

So if a rousing game of Big Booty isn’t your idea of a fun warm-up, try turning off your iPhone and connecting with your teammates instead.

What do you do to stay creatively juiced?

Photo © Kevin Thom