Thinking outside the car

Thanks to Steven Bell for his thoughtful comments on my last post. He's dead on about reading outside of the library literature to generate creative ideas. In fact, Steven has an actual "keeping up" philosophy that is immensely useful for recharging your creativity. In his comment, he states, "I think many of the creative ideas simply come from being influenced by something you read or see, and morphing that idea into something new for your environment."

This thought stuck with me and came to mind when I read over a blog post sent to me by my colleague Dan Ream (always on the lookout for the unique and/or unusual!). The post is from a blog run by VCU's very own (and very renowned) AdCenter. The post features a picture of a guy driving around with a Starbucks cup glued to the roof of his car. When people try to warn him that he's driving around with a cup of coffee up there, he smiles, waves and says, "Happy Holidays from Starbucks." Now, if that's not taking something from out there in the environment and morphing it into a new idea, I don't know what is. This driving advertisement just took a regular ol' cup and displayed it in such a way that just its placement drew heaps of attention. Messing around with context and turning the ordinary into the unusual is a terrific marketing tactic and one that I know we can put to good use in libraries.