What follows are two articles in one. The first will be about the new Yamaha Revstar Guitars Meet Your Other Half, The Sonic Experience film series and how powerful it is in marketing the Revstar brand. The second "article" will address how this same campaign exposes useful insights into creativity - and creative people - that we can all learn from as marketers.
First, here's the film.
When the guitar does the talking, it's all we hear.
Witnessing creativity happen as it is happening is one of the most exciting things a person can do. There's tension in the air because there's an equal chance the performance will be terrible or amazing. From the second we see the establishing super, "We did an experiment to see what happens...," the corresponding tension puts us on the edge of our seats.
The two musicians enter the set without saying a word, which only adds to the tension. They pick up the guitars and somehow just start playing together. A riff emerges, the other responds, they trade leads, and effectively use their guitars to communicate with each other, bringing the energy of the song up and down as if they had mapped this all out and rehearsed it long before.
It wasn't terrible. It was amazing.
For Yamaha, this idea is effective because it puts the attention of the viewer in one place: the sound of the Revstar guitars. Yes, the guitar players are important but are quite secondary to what they will be playing together.
In this way, it's the ideal product demo for a guitar brand. We're not being fed a laundry list of rational attributes about the guitars. There are no superiority claims being made. Just two accomplished guitar players showing us what can happen when guitars become extensions of the artist.
Cementing the concept for me is the title, "Meet Your Other Half, The Sonic Experiment." A double-entendre, the first being a nod to the two guitarists meeting each other for the first time and creating a "whole" in the music they played together. And the other a Yamaha Revstar guitar can be like your "other half" as you personally explore your own creative limits.
A nicely designed web site fulfills this idea and left me wanting more. More artistic "experiments" with all kinds of guitar players, unknowns and maybe a few famous players.
To me "The Sonic Experiment" is a raging six-string success full of potential for Yamaha.
And now for article two...
Insights into human creativity brought out by guitars.
As many of you know by now, I am a little obsessed with creativity. I love learning how it works, what gets in the way of it, and how we can improve our own abilities. Well, there are two accompanying "behind the scenes" videos in this Revstar campaign that present several insights into how we think about and motivate the creative people working on our businesses.
Here's the first one focusing on one of the guitarists above, Andrew Aged:
When playing with his band he says, "We leave a lot of room, so that means there could be a lot of risk." I remember when I was at Wieden & Kennedy many years ago our head of planning told me, "The creative brief is not the answer, it's just the starting point."
Leaving room in the creative brief - thinking of it as a starting point - will inspire your creative teams more than any brief that tries to be "the answer." Creative people love to solve problems. Throw them a completed Rubix Cube and what do they do? They mess it up so they can try to solve it. These people self-actualize by being creative, so let the creative brief inspire, not solve.
He goes on to say, "Sometimes having someone else there, it'll push me into places I wouldn't go." To me, this speaks to the importance of having multiple perspectives in the creative process. I have written about this topic before, so won't go into great detail here, but when people with different perspectives join forces on a creative project, there are more likely to be what Steven Johnson calls "idea collisions." We get pushed into places we might not otherwise go and boom, an idea.
Then Andrew nails the essence of creativity with, "The thing about the guitar is that it kind of removes a part of the intellect in the mind...it's coming from the heart." It's true, we now know that creativity requires removing a part of the intellect, or our innate propensity to focus.
Fact is, creativity is the opposite of focusing, yet focusing is our more powerful instinct - it keeps us alive. I've read and compiled several scientific studies that expose methods to help us reduce the overwhelming power of our working memory in my, "Creating Our Reality Requires Detaching From It." Distracting or otherwise occupying our working memory can liberate our minds.
For Andrew Aged, he does so simply by playing guitar.
And here's Andrew's other half, Twin Shadow:
Twin talks about how, "It is a cool thing to remind yourself of how important it is to take a step back sometimes." Great advice for brand managers everywhere. It's so easy to get caught up in the minutiae and forget the larger view.
Is what you're doing right now proving a larger brand idea or is it a random act of marketing? Do you even have a larger brand idea? If so, is it the right brand idea? Taking a step back once in a while makes for good long-term brand health.
Mr. Shadow also affirms what Andrew was saying above when he said, "I get really excited by playing something new. The results are always different." Remember creative people need to create, not take orders. You want them excited, not bored. Let them play something new using your brand as the "guitar."
And to the motivation of a creative person at an advertising agency, "There's certainly a joy that comes from...recording it. That's probably my favorite part about music. When you've created something from nothing and it exists forever." Creatives in ad agencies, live to make things. They want to make things and then see those things in the world. It's what drives them, it's what forgives the crummy salaries they earn, and it's what helps them rationalize working on yet another weekend.
Creative people need evidence of their creativity in the world. It keeps them motivated.
Yamaha, you gave us interesting insights into creativity with this new campaign but, more importantly, gave your brand an inspiring idea to play with. Can't wait to see (hear?) what you do with it next.
