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Creativity Squared in association withPeople on LBB
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Creativity Squared: Collecting Creative Inspiration with Matt Hassell

15/09/2022
Advertising Agency
Toronto, Canada
374
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The Ultralight Creative founder and CCO on sharing inspiration, the unclear provenance of great ideas, and how a creative project is like a dinner service

According to creativity researchers, there are four sides to creativity. Person (personality, habits, thoughts), product (the thing that results from creative activity), process (how you work), and press (environment factors, education and other external factors) all play a part. So, we figured, let’s follow the science to understand your art. Creativity Squared is a feature that aims to build a more well-rounded profile of creative people. 

Up today is Matt Hassell, who recently founded Ultralight Creative - his very own agency. He was previously CCO at Forsman & Bodenfors Canada. 

Matt Hassell is a modern CCO, who has a history of both building up creative agencies and delivering work that has been globally awarded by the Cannes Lions, Epica Awards, Webby’s, One Show, Effies, Clios, Communication Arts and several other international and Canadian award shows. Believing in creating a new narrative for advertising – one that treats innovation, technology and consumer insight as key ingredients in augmenting a brand’s position - he has delivered a broad base of work that has been him recognised and awarded in areas such as digital, design, film, print, events, shopper marketing, innovation and CRM.


Person

 
I am the type of creative who must continue to practise. Being as prolific as possible is a must. This isn’t to say most of what I could consider ideas are good ones… just that I have to stay in creative shape to ensure the requisite amount of innovation is present in the ideas we output.
 
I think creativity is one of the things that makes us human. That is to say, we are all creative. It is not a virtue. Creativity is a set of skills organised and reorganised to deliver a solution in a unique and compelling way. Some people need less practice to become masters at this. But creativity is in all of us.
 
I’m an extrovert. I need to bounce ideas off as many people as possible and I love to build on another person’s ideas too.
 
Routine is the canvas you can paint your ideas onto. It is the solid thing to build off of. When you have well-defined parameters, you can begin to figure out how to change them. You need to be boxed in to teach yourself how to jump out of the box. Routine provides that for me.
 
I love ads and advertising ideas, but I am most inspired by creativity outside of the industry. I look for artistry in everything – in a chef’s deft knife manoeuvres, a photographer’s command of light, or a singer holding a high note. I like to see (or at least try) to imagine the brushstrokes, but I try to hide them in my own work. I hate it when ‘your brief is showing’.
 
 

Product


To me, a great idea often has unclear provenance; the ideas that seem foreign but resonate anyway. If I can say “I have never seen this, but it rings true,” I know I am looking at something meaningful.
 
More recently, I have been awed by work that seems to advance not just the brand, but the industry. Innovation is so key to what we do. And I’m not just speaking technologically. I think just writing things in a voice that doesn’t seem trite or cliched is an innovation.

Incidentally, some of the work I’m most proud of tried to be innovative by reconsidering the way we make things - a logo and the end credits to a film.
 



Process

 
Great creative work begins well before the brief. It starts when you are sharing inspiration with one another and critiquing those things. I love to start a creative status meeting - talking about an album, exhibit or movie someone has seen and has a strong opinion on. This practice helps people feel comfortable in a team, helps them share inspiring work and helps them deconstruct the process a little bit too.
 
When you have an idea, you have to socialise the enterprise. Informal peer review is critical. It also helps determine how deep the idea may be. Can several others see the potential, and can they build on it?
 
To get to good work I think you have to always be collecting inspiration. Again, this is most useful when it comes from sources outside our industry. When I get stumped, I leave and I walk – as far as it takes to truly clear my mind. Sometimes there is nothing better for progression than to stop it entirely.
 

 

Press

 
I was born in Brooklyn, NY but moved to Montreal as a young child. The culture in Montreal has an overwhelming respect for art - something (I think) which has stayed with me. We then moved to Hamilton, Ontario where I went to high school. Hamilton is an industrial city where it seemed like ‘work’ was always being discussed, with discussions consistently revolving around either what you wanted to be, or what jobs you had held through high school. After a few years as a dishwasher and busboy, I planned on a culinary career and began cooking in kitchens. The rush of a kitchen service and the overwhelming release at its end are key factors for me.
 
A creative project is very much like preparing a dinner service. Our creative departments are very much like a kitchen. Our account service people are very much like servers and hosts. And that experience helped me build resilience. I’ve never worked harder or longer than in a crowded restaurant on a Friday night.
 
My craft was honed off-hours. From copywriting school to now, I always have ideas I am kicking around and writing down - and maybe saving for later.
 
I think agencies need to adopt a design-thinking mindset to not only facilitate creativity, but to avoid trapping creativity in the ill-named ‘creative department’. Get those ideas off of your laptops and into the hallways or slack channels, and share them and let people build on them!
 
Above all else, a respect for anyone involved in a project is key.


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