Over the last week, I have had the remarkable, inspirational and occasionally daunting responsibility of presiding over the jury for the PR competition of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, selecting work from the around the world to award with coveted gold, silver or bronze Lions.

It was a blast.

Much will be said about the winners and possibly the losers, so I’ll leave that to others and share a few headlines from the presidential chair after reviewing nearly 1,300 entries, scoring 900 of those and having two, three or sometimes four discussions about each of the 150 shortlisted campaigns from the around the world.

1. PR is firmly on center stage at Cannes as a showcase for remarkable, innovative creativity that delivers real results to businesses, brands, charities and governments.

We saw – and awarded – work from every corner of the world. And not just ideas that worked well somewhere far away, but also ideas developed far away that worked well here in Europe or the U.S.

We prized content based on a human or social insight, beautifully crafted and cleverly delivered. Often as video, but also as imagery, music and even poetry.

We saw a hundred different ways to earn media and amplify conversations – often in real time and with immediate impact.

We saw creativity that transcended in some cases into ingenuity.

And we saw real results. Not just re-tweets or likes or even downloads, but tangible outcomes in sales, market share, new legislation or reductions in death and injury.

2. The nature of PR is changing before our very eyes.

There was a time when “great content” was a well-written press release. Social media was a fax machine. And success was defined in clips or what we thought the advertising value of a placed article might be.

Those days are – largely – behind us.

So we have a choice. We can look at the Lions and say “that’s not PR,” or we can recognize that, though they do not reflect PR the way it used to be, they’re a pretty good indication of where our business going.

3. PR agencies can and do win at Cannes.

It’s gratifying to see the success of PR agencies at Cannes this year (especially here at Ketchum), and I’m confident that the Lions picked up by us or our competitors portend a Grand Prix very soon.

The first step to winning, of course, is to step into the arena. I’m not sure our best work as an industry is finding its way to competitions like Cannes, and that’s a shame; it will win.

The second step is to learn how to package our work in ways that stand out, tell a story and convince a jury. This is in our DNA, and after a little more experience with the nuances of this specific competition, I’m confident we’ll go from strength to strength.

And the third step is to keep at it. The PR Lions are a young competition, and we’re all still learning the ropes.

So let’s celebrate our progress, learn from our success and do it again next year.

A fictitious kingdom was cloaked in darkness, and the king directed his subjects to discover a source of light. He handed them coins and sent them searching. One subject scoured the city and returned with a lantern that bathed the monarch in light. It was a satisfactory but limited solution rooted in logic.

The second subject braved the forest instead, where an unexpected magical process melted the coins and turned them into glistening orbs. He returned to his majesty with the invention – an imaginative idea discovered more unconsciously than consciously – and illuminated the entire Kingdom.

This charming parable, accompanied by playful animation, kicked off the best presentation of opening day at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Kentaro Kimuro, co-CEO and executive creative director of Hakuhodo Kettle, the Omnicom agency headquartered in Tokyo, mixed personal charm, fanciful videos and storytelling, along with good, old-fashioned stage props, to share his formula for Creative Alchemy. His presentation made familiar techniques seem exciting because he didn’t just tell us to use storytelling like too many speakers these days – no, he actually told us a tale I’ll be recounting often.

The city represents the known, mapped and safe territory we typically go to for ideas. The forest represents the mysterious, uncharted and slightly dangerous terrain where innovative ideas lurk. Mr. Kimuro offered navigational advice for achieving our own creative alchemy, making the less traveled path feel safer for the courageous among us. “Bright ideas come from the darkest places,” he reminded us. Here are his tips for finding bright ideas:

1. COMBINE: We’ve all heard that new ideas are the product of combining old ideas but it bears repeating. Kentaro showcased the Cannes 2012 winner, “Museum of Me,” that agency Projector conceived by mashing up Facebook and design principles. His personal tip was to combine cucumber with honey to create the taste of melon (and I’ll be trying that one at home).
2. MIMIC: Anyone who believes that insights are the best catalysts for ideas will like this technique. Start by uncovering a basic human truth. The Nike Fuel Band mimics man’s calorie counting obsession while the Toyota 86 “Cornering Ecstasy” campaign mirrors our love of snapping photos on thrill rides with a clever, sensory-controlled photo system that captures Toyota drivers as they conquer intense curves.
3. UPSIDE DOWN: This is the principle of questioning and up-ending the standard. In the fashion industry, this approach made exposed bras trendy. BBDO’s “Speed Camera Liberty” for Volkswagen and “Quest Your World” for Google Maps are two interesting marketing examples.
4. THE TRUTH BEHIND THE FACT: “Where there’s smoke there’s fire” captures this technique. Understanding that “Where there’s a tsunami, there are lost memories” Hakuhodo found a truth that shaped “Memories for the Future,” letting storm victims post memories they didn’t want to lose so that others could help recover or replace them. Even more ingenious, Droga 5 developed “Help I want to save a life,” by recognizing that where there’s a band-aid, there’s a drop of blood. Their campaign co-promoted finger bandages with a marrow test to identify possible donors.
5. WHAT IF: Ketchum brainstorm facilitators love this technique, which asks participants to imagine an unexpected scenario to achieve new perspectives, feelings and ideas. Kentaro played a funny ESPN ad by Weiden + Kennedy that quite literally asks, “What if you were named Michael Jordan?” and shows a dumpy white man causing disappointment when he shows up at restaurants that expect the basketball player. “Tokyo City Symphony” by Hakuhodo is an interactive map of the city that users can animate with different musical choices, which came from asking, “What if I was a composer of Tokyo City?”

Like any great presenter, Kentaro told a clever, visual story, grounded it in practical tips, and made it relevant. “When we get nervous, we reach for traditional solutions,” he said. “But now is the time to find the courage to dare the forest and test the unknown.” He added, “Marketing is the activity of changing unconscious desires into conscious ones. We need to combine the logic from the city with the inspiration from the forest.”

After Cannes, I know where I’m heading. How about you?

I’ve spent much of the past week sequestered with 20 or so others on the Cannes Lions PR jury to determine which of more than 1,200 submissions are worthy of hardware on awards night, and it’s been a lively discussion.

As with any jury, opinions vary, and every perspective counts for a vote, so it’s hard to predict who will prevail and who will not in the end. Still, I’m hopeful we’ll recognize work that we all can be proud of. To that end, before we met, I exercised a prerogative as jury president to send the following views in advance to the jury:

• “It’s obvious that the lines between PR and other communications disciplines are blurring, and we’ll all arrive with our own opinions about what makes ‘good PR’ and what we should be looking for as indicators. In that regard it might be helpful to share some of my own views, just so you know my biases:
• I’m interested in recognizing work based on real, discernible audience insight.
•  I don’t think we should penalize work that uses or even leans on paid or owned content, but I hope we can focus on earned or shared content as the primary driver.
• I hope the results of entries are measurable and bear some reasonable connection to their stated goals. I think “awareness” is an acceptable outcome although less impressive than actual changes in attitude or behavior, and I’m not personally interested in AVE (advertising value equivalency) as a meaningful metric.
• As for creativity – the lodestone of the competition – well we will look forward to a healthy debate!”

Having previously reviewed several hundred submissions as part of the pre-evaluation process, I’ve been confident there’s great work to meet and exceed these expectations, and I’ve been glad to see that most of my fellow jurors concur.

As for the question I’m asked most often – will the winning work come from PR agencies? – there’s no way to say at this point. While it’s on the minds of many, I for one think it’s a secondary question. I’d love to see PR agencies win on Monday night, but I’m most interested in seeing great PR take home the Lions, regardless of what kind of agency has done the work.

In 2009, when the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival inaugurated the PR Lions award, the public relations industry transformed overnight from a party crasher to an invited guest at one of marketing’s biggest celebrations. Two years later, when the Festival changed its name to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the implication was clear: Great creative work transcends traditional boundaries.

And yet last year, the PR industry was filled with self-reflection as ad agencies once again dominated the Lions’ PR category. Now, just days before this year’s awards, we run the risk of once again leaving the table dissatisfied despite our progress. What will this say about our future at Cannes?

Before we despair, let’s take a step back. While we hope the discipline will gain ground in our own category, the awards are only one (major) piece of the big picture. If we look more closely, we’ll see that PR is deeply embedded in the Festival’s DNA, and that won’t be changing anytime soon.

Though the advertising industry got the party started, people attend Cannes Lions ‘for the PR.’ The qualities that make the Festival such an attractive and influential event are the very things that typify the best of PR and what we do for our clients every day. Thought leaders present their insights and opinions at seminars and workshops; audiences come together for passionate conversation about shared interests; brand-building occurs at a grass-roots level, directly with influencers and advocates; and people create and sustain valuable personal relationships. With all of these opportunities for storytelling, buzz-building and influencing the influencers, you could say the entire Festival is its own best argument for earned attention.

PR has been at Cannes all along – it just took a while for the agencies to catch up. And now that we have arrived, it’s time to move forward with the urgency required by our leaders and the changing marketplace, tempered by the perspective provided by decades of experience. It’s time to stop apologizing that we were late to the party. Instead, let’s acknowledge that we’re in the fray, and continue to push and be pushed by our sister disciplines. It’s time to pull our seats up to the table and enjoy the feast. PR helped cook it, after all.

Over the next week we will bring you Ketchum’s point of view from Cannes in words and images, and sharing content via our special Cannes*ectivity newsletter. If you’d like to receive the content directly to your Inbox, simply complete the form below.

This blog is just one of many ways Ketchum is participating in the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year. Our CEO for Europe, David Gallagher, was selected to serve as the president of this year’s PR Lions jury, an incredible honor within the global PR industry. Additionally, for the third year in a row, we’re sponsoring the festival’s Young Marketers Competition, and we’ll be co-sponsoring an event with the Holmes Report entitled “Creativity in the Conversation Economy”, led by Ketchum CEO Rob Flaherty.

Leadership is in crisis. That’s the headline from the 2013 Ketchum Leadership Communication Monitor (KLCM) .

Less than a quarter of people around the world believe that business leaders are providing effective leadership. It’s shameful and my view is that it could be so different if leaders embraced new forms of media.

KLCM is an annual analysis of the impact of leadership communication on the reputation of organizations. We seek out the viewpoint of 6,000 people in 12 countries.

In 2013 the study found that effective communication is the top attribute of great leadership for the second year in a row. 75 percent of respondents viewed effective communication as very important to leadership. The link is irrefutable.

Leadership communication: it’s personal

Social forms of communication such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, have the potential to enable leaders to communicate directly and transparently with their audiences.

Personal presence and engagement are a premium for leadership credibility, yet these new social channels lag traditional channels.

The result is that televised speeches, broadcast and print media are all ahead of social forms of media as channels that respondents scored highly as a source of credibility.

More evidence of the need for strong leadership communication comes in the form of its impact on the bottom line. Last year 44 percent of people stopped buying from a company due to poor leadership whereas 42 percent started buying from a company as a result of good leadership behavior.

Credibility and trust in networks

The CEO and C-suite lag employees and third-parties as credible sources of information on an organization.

The CEO comes in at six, with other senior management at seven. First is an employee in your network, industry analysts are second, financial analysts and customer service staff joint third and sales staff fifth.

The media rank joint alongside other senior management in seventh, again showing the potential of social forms of media for direct engagement.

The benefit of social forms of media isn’t solely limited to external audiences.

Social media is underestimated as a means of communication among the informal networks that exist internally and externally within an organization. It has no respect for hierarchy and democratizes communication.

A recent McKinsey Quarterly (February 2013) reported that leaders needed to develop social media and content creation skills in order to promote collaboration, knowledge sharing and tap employee capabilities to deliver competitive advantage.

Social media skills critical for business leaders

The message from the Ketchum Leadership Communication Monitor could not be clearer. Effective open communication is a proven commercial imperative and the primary requirement of effective leaders.

But communication via social forms of media is not without its challenges. My view is that leaders are failing to embrace new channels as a means of engagement because they are simply uncomfortable or don’t recognize the benefit of ceding control of corporate communication.

There is a conflict between the modern participatory forms of media and organizational communication and the industrial 20^th century model.

The reputational risk of allowing employees unbridled access to social media often manifests itself as anxiety in leaders and leads to a lock down or draconian social media policies. At least that’s my personal view.

Digital dinosaurs versus digital modernizers

Yet those leaders who are empowered to tell the story of their organization and engage via social forms of media exert a high degree of influence over their narrative. This direct engagement with employees, customers and prospects leads to greater organizational credibility, and ultimately trust.

In the next 12-months, I predict that we’ll see a chasm in influence and trust emerge between the leaders that communicate via social media and those who don’t. Are you a digital dinosaur or a digital modernizer?

Image credit: uxmag.com

Scent is the second most powerful and evocative sense, second only to vision. Smells often sit underneath the surface of our sensory brain, always there, and always affecting our experience, interpretation, and judgments. However, scent is not necessarily on the forefront of our periphery, unless it is extreme. Sephora’s pop-up Sensorium featured a scent-less room where one could taste a lollipop (which in turn, tasted very bland) showing how tasteless food can be when smell is eliminated.

Moreover, and more specific to our PR world, smell has a primitive power that we can use to conjure up emotions – an effective force of communication in our industry. The human nose recognizes over 10,000 smells. Think of the possibility!

Psychologists have long-known smell and memory are linked in multiple ways. More recently, certain smells are proving to be associated with certain perceptions. For example, the smell of grapefruit tends to make someone be perceived as thinner by 5-7 pounds and also causes the wearer to eat less. As it turns out, the magnolia tree smells like wealth, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. This bit of insight comes courtesy of perfumer Frederic Malle, from Parfums Christian Dior heritage. Naturally, he’s bottled up a fragrance reminiscent of magnolia trees, available for purchase at his boutique.

Many hotels are scented to evoke an atmosphere. On a recent trip to Dallas for a client, I finally asked the hotel if they were pumping a fragrance through the air shafts. Every inch of the establishment smelled magical, in a clean, light way that made me feel refreshed, even after a long flight or late night. Indeed they were. Is it a coincidence that I love that hotel? Definitely not.

Why am I hot on the scent trail? Recently I went with my monthly Trendincite group to a custom perfume making session in the home of a seasoned expert, Sue Phillips of Scenterprises, who introduced us to seven major olfactive categories – Citrus, Floral, Fruity, Oriental, Chypre, Woody and Fougere. Sue discussed top notes, middle notes and base notes of each smell – a level of complexity which translates to the notion of telling a story with each fragrance, the notes representing a beginning, middle, and end.

Developing my own “story” was an insightful experience – we learned typical pairings of personality and fragrance category. Elements of my personality led me to smells I wouldn’t have predicted based on past perfume purchases. Apparently, florals aren’t my thing. Having one’s own “scent” is oddly empowering, though. Can a person be captured in an essence? Can a brand?

It’s about time we turn our clients onto the power of scent. Some marketers have wised up and leveraged olfactory power – food brands pumping bus stops with the smell of home cooked meals, for example. But there’s a lot of whitespace available. Even if the push isn’t related to smell alone, visual stunts can be supplemented by smell. Breaking through doesn’t only have to be verbal or visual. As Elle Woods says in the successful romantic comedy, Legally Blonde, when handing in her resume – “Oh! And it’s scented! I think it gives it a little something extra, don’t you think?” A lot extra, Elle.

Photo credit: psychology.about.com

Everyone loves to enjoy the fruits of creativity, right? Wrong. The sad truth is that when people say they’re in the market for something really creative, it’s often the last thing they want. True creativity will shake up their assumptions; it will feel completely left-field; it will come across as childish, or offensive, or bizarre. That’s how it works, folks. You know that, and I know that, but the person nervously twiddling with the purse-strings? Maybe not so much.

When this happens, here are a few tips you can follow to retain your sanity (or, failing that, to channel your insanity in a constructive manner):

Make an argument for creativity. This might be your first line of defense, and there is plenty of literature to support it. Mounting a rational defense for irrational ideas might seem quixotic, but if your audience logged any hours in a high-school debate club, you just might have a chance.

Draw stick figures in the margins of your notebook. Reinventing our creative defeats through creative means has a long history – nary a novelist has gone to print without settling old scores against those who have curtailed her creativity. Frustration can be a fuel for great thinking – just be careful not to let the wrong people realize they’re being lampooned.

Trash a hotel room. Come on, you’ve always wanted to do it – now’s your chance! More constructive (and cheaper) ways to physically vent your anger include having a workout, going out for a nice long walk, or just screaming into a pillow – but they aren’t quite as satisfying.

Sneak it in. Sometimes, you have to build a Trojan horse for your idea by hiding something radical within something that seems pretty unsurprising on the surface. It’s all in the presentation -  and creating the “safe” façade just might require more creativity than the original idea.

Write satirical blog posts about what to do when you can’t be creative. Our struggles can be so much easier when we have other people to share them with. Creative folks should regularly go out for beers (real or virtual) and swap stories about how great it is to be creative and how dull everyone else is for not appreciating us. War stories and advice from others can invigorate us for the next challenge.

Be creative anyway. When used appropriately, creativity is like a liquid – it’ll flow past whatever obstacle you put in its path. Whenever someone says “No,” what you should really hear is “No to some of it but not all of it.” Try expressing your idea a different way. Try taking something that works from your idea and reimagining it in a different context. Or try doing the polar opposite of what you originally thought of. Either way, don’t let it get you down – you’re still brilliant, even if it takes a while to convince other people.

Image credit: fatatommarketing.com

This post first appeared on the Holmes Report.

Break Through Buzz is the creative stuff that impressed Ketchum’s creative community this week. Check out what captured our imaginations and inspires us to keep pushing the boundaries of possibility.

It’s a Sign! It’s an Umbrella! It’s a Bench!
Selected by Brian Keenan

Two things stand out to me from this IBM campaign (client) that brought billboards with functional purposes – bench, ramp, etc. – to city dwellers in France. One, it’s a simple idea that took lots of time to physically create. Creativity takes time and, more importantly, the client’s understanding that results for new ideas are not always guaranteed. Two, it’s a new expression of a longtime campaign. It’s an example of they type of incremental ideas we should bring the client WITHOUT BEING ASKED.

This Is a Good Sign
Selected by Jeff Lewonczyk

I think we’ll be seeing a lot more like this in the near future – digital agency Breakfast has created an interactive, moving street sign that uses input from social media to display customized information as diverse as transit directions, nearby restaurant, sports scores, breaking news and much more. Yes, a lot of this stuff is available on our smartphones, but the potential of a public, communal resource like this creates a lot of interesting opportunities for marketers – plus, it’s just plain cool.

How Do You Say “May the Force Be With You” in Navajo?
Selected by Tera Miller

As part of ongoing efforts to preserve Navajo culture, Manuelito Wheeler, director of the Navajo Nation Museum, called on the Force. Tribal officials and Lucasfilm collaborated to create a new version of the 1977 classic Star Wars - translated into Navajo. What a brilliant way to reinvigorate a language with native speakers and non-native speakers alike! The newly translated film premieres on July 3. Only then will you finally learn how to say “May the Force be with you” in Navajo.

When Is a Statue Not a Statue?
Selected by Elena Weinstein

This is a good example of the centrality of context in peoples’ conceptualization of art and their surroundings. By simply adding a tip jar to a statue that had never previously been mistaken for a real person, passersby suspended their disbelief and convinced themselves that the statue was, in fact, alive. This is a good lesson for creative communicators that we should always pay close attention to contextualization in our campaigns – a small tweak can inspire a wide range of interpretation.

The 25 Most Audacious Companies
Selected by Charlotte Haigh

This list of the ‘scrappiest, smartest most disruptive companies of the year’ is a great place to look for inspiration. Although we are lucky to work at an established global agency, it never hurts to check out what disruptive dreamers are doing to grow their businesses in this age of entrepreneurship.

Ketchum welcomed Chris Hughes, the new publisher and editor-in-chief of The New Republic, to our D.C. Media Team’s “Ketchum Conversations” series to discuss his venture to take the storied publication into a new era of journalism.

The publication will celebrate its 100-year anniversary next year at a time when there are many questions about whether long-form and opinion journalism will survive in this “snacking” era of readers mostly scanning news for fun or attention-grabbing headlines on social media sites like his former employer, Facebook.

Hughes was not just another employee of Facebook, he co-founded the social media empire with Mark Zuckerberg and also was the mastermind behind Barack Obama’s online organization for his 2008 presidential bid. There he created the far-reaching network that revolutionized grassroots political organizing that has become the benchmark for future political campaigns.

And now with those endeavors behind him, Hughes has made the leap to the media industry with his recent purchase of The New Republic and is already making waves. Our conversation largely focused on the evolution of long-form and opinion news writing and how consumers are engaging with the media as journalism evolves.

Hughes took the position that there is still tremendous value today in long-form journalism that encompasses a well-written narrative – and that that type of writing is still sought by readers. And, as the magazine adjusts to the evolving media landscape and audience, Hughes is also taking the organization down the path of offering sponsored content and hosting newsmaker events in a bid to play a bigger role in the policy arena.

While it did not come up during our conversation, Hughes’ purchase of the magazine has not been without controversy. The New Republic leans left politically, and has been under fire by its former publisher Martin Peretz who raised questions about whether it was becoming simply a mouthpiece for the White House. There also has been much made recently about accusations that Hughes bumped a healthcare opus by renowned journalist Steven Brill to run an interview piece with President Obama.

One need only flip through the new pages of The New Republic – or on your mobile device – to see how Hughes and his team are trying a new approach to long-form and opinion journalism. Hughes said that social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and individuals blogs have largely taken over the traditional opinion journalism space and therefore readers are not as willing to pay for that kind of material anymore.

Instead, The New Republic is looking to “focus on quality” long-form journalism that is extensively reported and analytical, building a narrative around an issue, policy or opinion, Hughes said. The publication will not focus on competing with “snacking”, pointing to aggregators and quick-hit news outlets like Huffington Post, Daily Beast or Politico. “That’s not where our niche lies,” he said.

To accomplish his goals, Hughes has brought back as The New Republic’s editor, Frank Foer, who joined him in the presentation to the Ketchum D.C. office. They have nearly doubled the newsroom staff, to 50, and they are looking to try to set the agenda among policymakers. They pointed to a recent piece his team did on the shadowy world of day care in America. The story, entitled “The Hell of American Day Care”, delved into how the industry was largely unregulated and rife with problems. Foer said in the aftermath of the piece, some lawmakers and the Department of Health and Human Services are now asking questions about the industry.

So far, according to Hughes, the statistics are showing that he and his team are making some headway. With the re-launch, subscription numbers are up by 40 percent to nearly 50,000 and with almost 2 million unique visitors to its website, up 145 percent. Hughes also boasted about some high-profile subscribers in the Washington political sphere, but unfortunately we can’t name them here.

With his background at Facebook and on the Obama campaign, Hughes is also bringing some 21^st Century technology updates to The New Republic – returning subscribers to where they left off when they transition from one digital device to another to continue reading a story. Additionally, every story is available in audio form, read by a human being, not a computer – ideal for those who can’t read the magazine while on a treadmill or on the trail.

Hughes is also taking The New Republic into a direction many outlets are considering – sponsored content, which is an area that presents challenges to us as media relations specialists and the news media itself. Hughes made the point that good content will get read through sponsored pieces rather than a banner ad. He highlighted a recent sponsored piece by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he said received a 4.5 percent click-through rate. Hughes also directly addressed some concerns that have emerged about transparency related to sponsored content. He made it clear that full disclosure is a must, declaring it “can’t be murky.” The New Republic is also hosting events, such as high-level, invite-only conversations with newsmakers from the policy and corporate worlds on key issues of the day such as climate change.

While some may view The New Republic as a political mouthpiece for one side of the political debate, the newsroom staff is tackling broad, significant policy issues that confront public relations specialists and our clients every day. They are also engaging in dialogues where clients want to be, close to those who make policy. It remains to be seen whether Hughes and his team will be successful finding that niche of long-form and opinion journalism, but it definitely is something to watch closely.

Image Credit: www.capitalnewyork.com

Last month, I threw out all inhibitions and hit fast forward 90 years into the future.

Recently, as we celebrated Ketchum’s 90th anniversary, agency CEO Rob Flaherty shared that 10 percent of the focus for the occasion would be on the past, and 90 percent would be on the future. With that, I sat around a conference room table with four colleagues – all from different specialty areas – tasked with sharing our vision for the next 90 years with the New York office.

As wild ideas including media events across the galaxy and telepathic pitching filled the air, my healthcare-focused mind thought “is there a scientific journal article to back that up?” But I took less than 90 seconds to indulge this thinking, and my creative mind led me to blurt out “Yes! And we could read reporters’ minds and know exactly how to adjust the pitch in the moment so it would resonate with them.” Ultimately, we refined our ideas to those that were most significant to clients, colleagues and the community, but we also left room for some of those less comfortable ideas.

We’ve all been faced with situations at work and in our personal lives that are new, complex or downright unpredictable. In healthcare communications, our constant challenge is to understand and share complex medical information with people in a way that makes sense to them and is engaging but that also falls within the guardrails of a highly regulated industry. What’s important when working with complex information or trying to predict the unknown is to be open to new, big ideas that aren’t familiar or in your comfort zone.

Collaborate with others across specialty areas within and outside your company to help expand your perception of the challenge at hand and to broaden the solution beyond one discipline. Understand that the way we do things will constantly change as the world evolves, but trust that if we stay true to the core values, insights and goals – the WHY we do things – everything will work out OK (and often much more than just OK) in the end.

There’s no doubt healthcare communications will change as we move into the future and technology provides more opportunities for people to own their health research and decisions. We must be open to flexing with the changing environment, but we should remember that our goal is to share information with people and help encourage them to open the lines of communication about their health.

Being creative in healthcare doesn’t mean ignoring the rules and regulations. Amy McCarthy, head of Ketchum’s New York healthcare practice, encourages colleagues to construct creative solutions that our clients can actually execute. This means being open to stretching thinking for a period of time before refining it rather than shutting down an idea immediately. I challenge colleagues, clients and others to also let your inhibitions go, even in the comfort of solo brainstorming, for at least 90 seconds. Allow yourself to get past the rules, and then refine the idea so it can actually be executed.

That’s why we’re pleased to announce this special edition of Health-E Minds, Ketchum’s healthcare blog, which is dedicated to creativity in healthcare communications. We hope you’ll visit Health-E Minds and join the discussion as we explore what creativity in healthcare means, how we think it has evolved and will continue to over the years, tips from Ketchum colleagues around the network for staying creative in a regulated environment and guidance on how to help yourself and others “get past no” when it comes to championing creative ideas. This is only a starting point, and we enthusiastically welcome contributions to this ongoing conversation.

View the other blogs in the special edition here:

• Hit 90 Seconds of Uninhibited Creativity by Christa Lombardi
• Creativity In Healthcare by Nancy Hicks
• Behind the Glass: Healthcare Creativity through the Years by Health-E Minds Creativity Panel
• Healthful Creativity: How to Lead in a Regulated Industry by Health-E Minds Creativity Panel
• Getting Past No by Melissa Barry
• How Healthcare Practitioners are Helping Ideas Grow Past No by Health-E Minds Creativity Panel

Image credit: www.creativitypost.com