Why brainstorming doesn’t work and what creative brief writers can learn from it.

Brainstorming does not work.

This is old news. Dating back to the late 1950s, research shows that “all ideas are good ideas” brainstorming produces fewer ideas than if individuals are left to their own private ideations and then share and compare them in groups.

Further, evidence is solid that if you do exactly the opposite of what Alex Osborne, the “O” in B.B.D.O., espoused in his 1948 bestselling book, Your Creative Power — that is, you add the element of debate and disagreement to a typical “keep it positive” brainstorming session — the quality of ideas also increases. Dramatically so. 5661_ideas_moderation_permalink-1

A central problem, according to Rebecca Greenfield in her July 2014 article for Fast Company, is what’s called “conformity pressure.” Here’s what she says:

Because brainstorming favors the first ideas, it also breeds the least creative ideas.” She continues: “People hoping to look smart and productive will blurt out low-hanging fruit first. Everyone else then rallies around that idea both internally and externally.

What she suggests instead comes from a number of thinkers who on their own developed an idea remarkably similar, but now is referred to as “brainwriting.”

It’s simple and obvious. Participants write down their ideas first before a group discussion. They post those ideas on a board anonymously. Everyone in the group reviews those ideas and votes/comments on the best. Only then, according to Greenfield, does discussion commence. writers-block

Greenfield notes that Leigh Thompson, management professor at the Kellogg School, in her book Creative Conspiracy, discovered that “brainwriting groups generated 20% more ideas and 42% more original ideas as compared to traditional brainstorming groups.”

Professor Thompson made this remarkable observation:

I was shocked to find there’s not a single published study in which a face-to-face brainstorming group outperforms a brainwriting group.

So what can creative brief writers learn from this research? Two things.

First, as powerful as the argument is for collaboration—the idea that no single person should write the vital “first-step” document in the creative process—individuals who make up the small team that writes the creative brief must still contribute individually before they collabrate.

Greenfield’s article (“Why brainstorming doesn’t work; try this technique instead”) demonstrates the dangers of “group think.” I think this is less likely to happen in the smaller team (two, at most three) who writes a brief, but it can still happen. One person can dominate. One person can be more senior.

Collaboration helps to eliminate at best, minimize at least, a dominate voice by employing this “brainwriting” technique before the creative brief writing team assembles to discuss and write the document. Key questions on a creative brief are uniquely difficult to answer and require thought.

Consider the way a creative team functions: a copywriter and an art director meet to review the project’s details, acquired from the creative brief. They may spend some time batting ideas around, but typically, in short order, they go off to mull over and meditate on their own.

In a day or two, they regroup and compare notes. That’s when the real work begins. They discuss, debate, edit, revise, shape, form and reform…until they arrive at a concept, or a portfolio of concepts. These ideas may bear some resemblance to their original thinking, or not.

The point is, each creative team has a process: meet, discuss, mull alone, regroup, debate, edit, polish, present. The process may vary with each team, but in 25 years as a creative, I can vouch for the importance of and need for a process.

The same must be true for the collaborative process of writing the creative brief. The team can meet for a general discussion of what the document should include, but time must be set aside for individual ideations before the team meets again to write the brief.

Second, brainwriting research makes it clear that the process of producing the creative brief may need more time to allow participants to nurture the best possible “spark” for the creative team.

I have no evidence to suggest that today’s brief writers are denied sufficient time to produce this document, except to say that the nature of the business world makes it harder and harder to build in “thinking” time for anyone.

We live in a “It’s due yesterday” time crunch. That was true when I started in the ad business in the early 1980s. It’s worse today.

However, the price you pay for a poorly conceived and poorly executed creative brief is measured in both dollars and lost time. watch-time

I am reminded of a poster I saw on the wall of a production department manager, which sums up the dilemma succinctly, and serves as a gentle reproach:

Old-school brainstorming is dead.

Brainwriting works. Use its principles to ensure the creative brief writing team has time to do its job well.

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When your creative brief process is broken and how to fix it.

Beginning writers tend to learn a lesson about plagiarism the hard way. They commit it unintentionally. They didn’t mean to quote an author without giving him or her due credit, but…

Unintentional plagiarism, I can attest from years of classroom experience, is the most likely kind of plagiarism a college freshman blunders into. The problem is, it’s still plagiarism and they still fail the paper.

The analogy works for a broken creative brief process. The participants, whether they’re in an ad agency or the marketing department of an advertiser, often have no idea their briefing process is broken. They didn’t mean to mess it up, but they did. Something isn’t right, and they keep chugging along hoping to muddle through.

It’s not unlike the definition of insanity: You keep doing the same thing over and over and hoping for, well, you know the rest.

So how can you tell when your briefing process is broken? What are the red flags?

Look for these four warning signs. In fact, if you recognize even only one of them, it’s time to address your creative briefing process before it does, in fact, break.

You Know It’s Broke When:

1: The people who work from the brief roll their eyes after it’s presented.

That’s an exaggeration. The people who work from the brief, and this is the creative people, are a difficult lot to begin with. They love to complain: about bad briefs, bad coffee, bad shoes. They complain because it’s in their nature. They tend to be jaded and borderline cynical. Okay, forget borderline.

They complain about bad briefs, especially, because they read them so often. They may in fact respond to any brief with an exasperated sigh. It’s reflexive. They can’t help it.

But if this happens frequently and is followed by a rush of questions of a certain nature, you’re in trouble.

These questions tend to look like this:

“I thought you said we couldn’t…”

“Are you sure you mean it this way? Last time you said…”

“Why is this okay now? Last month…”

“But I thought they hated (insert color/celebrity/location/idea)…”

“Wait a minute. That single-minded proposition has two/three/four ideas. Which one do they really mean?”

2: The parties do not agree on content.

You Know It’s Broke #2 is a subset of #1. Even if you can satisfactorily answer all the questions posed by your creatives after the briefing, you may not have a salvageable brief.

Those questions—and the underlying attitude of skepticism—tend not to be addressed to anyone’s satisfaction, and are a symptom of the broken process.

The fundamental premise of the brief comes into question. One of two things can happen.

First, the briefing ends in disagreement and creative go off and write their own brief, even if it’s not a formal document. They devise their own Single-Minded Proposition and that becomes the brief.

Sometimes this actually works. But you won’t know it even happened until the day the work is presented. If the work does not meet expectations, the Creative’s Creative Brief Syndrome is typically to blame (that’s my fancy term for the creative department’s DIY brief. Which you don’t want).

I know. I’ve committed this heresy myself, although only a handful of times. I’d say my batting average was above .500. That’s exemplary if you’re in the Majors. It’s horrible when you bomb in a creative presentation.

The second scenario, and the more likely outcome, is that the creative team leaves the briefing confused, and that’s what the work looks like when it’s presented. It’s a perfect illustration of “garbage in, garbage out.”garbage-in-garbage-out

These situations are why I wrote my book on the creative brief. It was the result of feeling utterly frustrated because my creative department operated either without a formal brief altogether, or we functioned with a brief that one or more players did not fully embrace. Any process is only as strong as its weakest link.

3: Only one player in the process writes the creative brief. This situation will almost always guarantee Reasons 1 and 2 above.

You Know It’s Broke #3 stands independent of the first two. It’s a symptom of old-school silo-ing, a tradition that dates back decades.

The creative departments of major ad agencies know first hand about the silo effect. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, most creative departments did not have “teams” of art directors and copywriters. They were separate departments. The did not talk to each other.

Geniuses like Bill Bernbach changed that. Copywriters and art directors were teamed up and expected to work together. The results played a seminal role in producing the Golden Era of advertising in the 1960s.

silosAccount and brand planners have wised up in recent years. They have been moving away from working independently as the owners of the creative brief and have advocated for cross-department collaboration. The principle that works so well in creative departments applies here.

If the author of the creative brief in your place of business works alone, even if she works with a partner in the same department, chances are you have a broken creative briefing system, or one that is sick and needs 911.

If creatives have no role in the process, they have little at stake. If they collaborate on not just writing the brief, but then also play a role in briefing on the brief they helped author, things change. Drastically and dramatically.

4. The reviewers of the creative work don’t know how to review the creative work.

The ability to offer clear feedback on the creative work is an absolute job requirement. There is no excuse for being inarticulate or afraid to hurt someone’s feelings.

Rest assured, advertising creatives are professionals. They have thick skin and can take criticism.

Still, being a critic is not easy. It takes finesse, patience and practice. Especially practice.

So I recommend that you practice. A lot. You don’t become adept at writing a creative brief by doing it once. Or even 10 times. You must write them dozens of times and even then you’ll learn something new with each attempt.

Find a piece of creative work not connected to your job or your brand. It could be a TV spot or an email.

Critique it. What do you like? What doesn’t work? Make a list. Write down your thoughts. You don’t have the creative brief against which to judge it, so use your savvy as a consumer.  You are, after all, a consumer.

Team up with a creative in your department or at your agency. Work one-on-one with a piece of neutral creative (meaning something neither you nor the creative is connected to) and ask questions about how to review it. Believe me, your creative partner will have some thoughts and won’t be afraid to speak them out loud. This is a learning opportunity for you.

The point is, the only way to become proficient at reviewing creative is to review it.

Step back and ask yourself some tough questions about your creative brief and the process of briefing. If you suspect any one of the symptoms I’ve discussed above, it’s time to reexamine your process.

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It’s better to think inside the box.

A killer creative brief is hard to write. It should be hard. It’s supposed to be hard. If it were easy, no one would complain about the dearth of good creative briefs. And creatives love to complain about bad creative briefs. complainer-657x360

Ergo, writing a good one is not easy.

Is that why so many are poorly written? Because expectations are so low?

Perfect, at least some of us have come to know, is the enemy of the good.

Many authors have been attributed to this line: “I would have made this letter shorter, but I didn’t have enough time.” Some credit Mark Twain. Others Cicero.

Constraints force us to make choices. The best of us respond to the challenge. Too often, the creative brief writer throws up his hands and gives in to the temptation to include everything for fear of missing something. As Oscar Wilde would say in response, “I can resist anything, except temptation.”

To write a killer creative brief requires courage, confidence and brevity.

Next time someone (your boss, the client, a weak-minded account type) encourages you to add more to your creative brief, make them talk to the hand. Then recite these three reasons:

1. Liberating Constraint.

Force yourself to keep your brief to one page. That doesn’t mean a two-page brief is automatically bad or wrong. It simply means you are conscious of the need to find the essence of a product’s message.

The concept is called “Liberating Constraint.” When you force yourself to be reductive, you open creative doors. When you agree to reside inside a self-imposed “box,” the experience frees you. There’s a ton of research to back this up. prison-bars-image

You are not writing a user guide. You are writing explicit instructions to the creative team. The brief is designed to give them a push, point them in one possible direction, spark their thinking.

The brief is the first step in the creative process. Get the creatives started, then step back and let them do their jobs.

Ultimately, this means you must make choices. You must edit. You must be selective. You must be, well, brief.

Your goal, always: One page.

2. Two pages: No! Two minds: Yes!

Whomever writes a creative brief is not weak of heart. You got game. You strut. Even if inside you’re quaking in your boots, you don’t show it. You gotta exude confidence.

This is precisely why writing the brief is never a solo project. You must collaborate. It’s not the work of a committee, but rather of a dedicated team.

Compare this process to what creatives do: an art director/graphic designer pairs with a writer, and the two of them play a kind of creative ping pong. Ideas bounce back and forth between them. Some are rejected, others are kept to explore further.

The creative brief demands the same dual-minded attention. You share responsibility for the document. You both take credit. Which means you also must accept blame for a poorly written effort.

Hey, creatives routinely present lame ideas. It happens. Truth be told, they are often the ones who know their best from their worst ideas. The difference between creative teams and brief-writing teams: Brief writers create a single creative brief. Creatives always present multiple ideas. Oh well. Get used to it.

3. When the brief-writing team includes a creative, creatives now have a clear stake in the process.

When account or planning folks were the sole proprietor of creative briefs, that essentially set up a “them vs us” mentality. It was a lot easier for creatives to diss an even moderately bad brief. Why not? They had no skin in the game.

Make a creative part of the brief-writing process, and all that changes. As it should be. Creatives now own a piece of the effort. And when a creative assists the account or planning colleague in the briefing process, fellow creatives quickly realize their brethren is on board.

It makes a huge difference.

Liberating Constraint is my main message here, which clearly covers points 1 and 2.  But point 3 is a benefit, and creatives by nature will help keep the brief-writing process focused and concise. Creative always exist inside a box of one kind or another: a :30 spot, a one-page ad, any communication with a time or space limit. These are all examples of constraints. how-to-expand-your-comfort-zone

Thinking “outside the box” has become a horrible cliche that means, well, I have no idea what it means any more.

Thinking “inside the box” means self-imposed limits. That’s a great definition of a creative brief. It’s no guarantee that the document will be well written, much less inspired. But at least it won’t take very long to discover that fact.

Practice Liberating Constraint whenever you write a creative brief. Force yourself to make enlightened, insightful choices based on your brand story. Your brief will be more inspired. And so will your creative teams’ work.

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What “Finding Dory” can teach us about brand insights

Two disparate worlds collided this weekend that produced an insight. This is supposed to happen to people like me who use insights for a living.

First, I read contributing Atlantic editor David H. Freedman’s thoughtful piece, “The War on Stupid People” in the July/August issue. He tells us that the lack of intellectual chops, otherwise known as being stupid, has become the new acceptable put down. “Those who consider themselves bright,” he writes, “openly mock others for being less so.”

This practice is reinforced in corporate America. Many companies, Freedman tells us, are implementing new intelligence tests for potential hires. If you don’t measure up, it becomes a mark against you, and a reason not to make an offer of employment.

This in spite of the emerging evidence that smart people do not necessarily make the best employees. Something about having little experience with failure and thin skins. Interpersonal skills, self-awareness and emotional qualities, Freedman writes, can be better job performance predictors.

Perhaps his most astute observation is this: “Among other things, the less brainy are, according to studies and some business experts, less likely to be oblivious of their own biases and flaws, to mistakenly assume that recent trends will continue into the future, to be anxiety-ridden, and to be arrogant.”

The sad fact is, the minority of Americans who are in this intellectual elite influence the world for the rest of us.

Then I went to see the Disney/Pixar blockbuster, “Finding Dory.” It was not on my “must see” list, but after reading so many positive reviews, I relented. It is that rare combination of laugh-out-loud entertainment and serious message vehicle. As a college educator, I was reminded to take its message into my classroom everyday. Finding-Dory-Disney-pixar-2016

But as a brand strategist and storyteller as well as a creative brief educator, I saw another message. Advertising professionals take data and research seriously, as we should. What we learn from the things consumers tell us as well as what we discern from their unconscious (i.e. body language) behavior, lead us, or so we hope, to a valuable insight, maybe even more than one. The kind of insight that makes tailoring communication to persuade them to try and/or remain loyal to a brand.

That’s the theory, anyway.

I left the theatre while the credits to “Finding Dory” were still rolling, and I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. The central question posed in the movie is the very question we brand guardians must ask to guide us in finding the insights we covet.

Before I get to that question, here’s a brief synopsis for those of you who have not yet seen this charming, heart-warming and outrageously funny tale, which incidentally also made me cry.

“Finding Dory” is a sequel to the popular “Finding Nemo” that came out in 2003. Its premise is that a year after Dory, a fish with short-term memory problems, helps Marlin find his son, Nemo, she remembers she has parents and sets out to find them. Marlin and Nemo go along to help. Thoroughly engaging mayhem unfolds, and it is no “spoiler” to tell you that in spite of her clear deficiencies, Dory finds mom and dad. It’s how she manages this feat, and what she learns that make this adventure so memorable.

Back to the question: At one point in the movie, when Marlin and Nemo get separated from Dory, the two struggle, momentarily paralyzed with inaction. Nemo poses the question, “What would Dory do?” to help his dad figure out the next move.

At first, papa Marlin assumes the intellectual approach and begins to analyze and synthesize the situation in order to ascertain a strategy. Until he realizes that’s not how Dory operates. Dory’s lack of conventional intelligence, which might be classified these days as a developmental disability, gives the lie to her abilities.

Marlin has his “Ah-ha!” moment and decides to take a leap of faith, Dory-like, to keep the search for Dory, and the story line, moving.

It is both this question and its answer, combined with Freedman’s observations about so-called intelligence, that produced my own “Ah-ha!” moment.

Finding a brand insight is a hard thing to do. There are no guarantees that intrepid digging will uncover anything remotely insightful. But this guarantee is, well, guaranteed if you stop at data and research.

A brand insight comes, not from brainy application of intelligence, but rather from what I’ll call the “Dory effect”: trusting your instincts and allowing intuition to rule.

By this I do not mean to ignore data and research. On the contrary. Remember the advice of James Webb Young in his 1948 masterpiece, “A Technique for Producing Ideas.”  When you are in the creative zone of the five steps Webb outlines, you eventually arrive at step 3: information overload requires you to walk away and clear your head. By this moment the seeds have been planted. But only at this moment can they bloom into an idea. techforproducingideas1

This is the answer to the question, “What would Dory do?” It is the leap of faith Dory took from the moment she decided to go on her parent quest. It is the foundation on which rested every decision she made along the way.

It is the foundation on which insights arrive, too. I say “arrive” because I believe the intuitive, creative mind is more likely to be receptive to an idea than one grounded only in data- and research-based analysis.

No one “uncovers” an insight. An insight emerges after information is processed and left to settle, and then sparked by the intuitive brain.

Date and research are the nutrients. Intuition is the blender.

The next time you are in the hunt for a brand insight, don’t forget to ask:

What would Dory do?

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How many “practice” creative briefs have you written?

kobe-bryant-practices-in-nike-kobe-9-elite-02-570x570Basketball legend Kobe Bryant has made countless jump shots and layups in his practice sessions.

“As a kid growing up, I never skipped steps. I always worked on fundamentals because I know athleticism is fleeting.”  Kobe Bryant

Tennis star Serena Williams has likely hit uncountable numbers of volleys in practice since she was a young girl. Someone asked if her success were due to luck.

The legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus has said that he played fewer tournaments than his fellow competitors because he chose to spend that time practicing his game at home.

“Nobody—but nobody—has ever become really proficient at golf without practice, without a lot of thinking and then hitting a lot of shots.” Jack Nicklaus

Seinfeld has told tens of thousands of jokes on stages across the country. Ballet star Misty Copeland has spent thousands of hours in the classroom, working at the ballet barre, all in preparation for her performances. Speaking legend Tony Robbins has rehearsed hours and hours for his presentations.

The same is true for ministers, gymnasts, coaches, courtroom lawyers…you name the profession, and you can imagine the almost unimaginable hours of preparation these dedicated individuals have devoted to their craft, all to be ready to display their skills when they matter most: on the job.

So I ask you: How much preparation have you put in to write a creative brief?

Here’s my guess: Exactly none.

There is no preparation. You just write one when you have to write one.

And therein lies a major missed opportunity. No one practices the skills required to write a creative brief well. There is no “creative brief boot camp” to make you sweat your tail off learning the fundamentals of writing this document. There should be.

Sounds absurd, right? Not from where I sat, which was on the receiving end of one of those too often poorly written documents that landed on my desk.

As a point of comparison, creatives constantly practice their concepting skills. Young creatives especially. Sometimes they don’t know when to stop practicing. They do “spec” work, whether it’s for their own professional portfolio or some pro-bono client or even a friend’s dog-sitting service. They’re like little “Energizer bunnies”: they keep concepting and concepting until their brains cramp. This is how they get really good.

When I was younger, I used to flip through the Yellow Pages (remember that?) until I’d find an interesting business, the more obscure the better. Then I’d create a spec ad for that business. Back in the 1980s, when I was just getting started, I wrote a spec-ad for a music teacher who taught the accordion: “I can teach anyone to carry a tune.” Groaner, yes, but the fact is, I practiced my craft even when no one was looking.

If you write creative briefs for a living, can you say the same? If the answer is no, my next question is: Why not?

I’ve said it over and over: the creative brief is the first step in the creative process. Get it wrong here and everything that follows suffers proportionately. It’s the principle of “garbage in, garbage out” at work.garbage-in-garbage-out

Practice is vital.

But who has time to practice?

Professionals do. If you’re a professional, you must practice.

Here are three techniques you can adopt right away.

1. Practice in your head.

One of the more important questions on a creative brief is, “What is the Single-Minded Proposition?” This is something you can practice formulating as you commute to and from work. You don’t even need pen and paper.

Imagine the product or service, conjure its key benefit and translate that benefit into a “What’s in it for me?” proposition that directly addresses the product’s best customer. Think of that short phrase or sentence. Don’t stop there. Think of alternatives. Come up with many SMPs. Which one is the best? Why?

Turn this into a brain-game and repeat it often. It’s called practice. It’s what professionals do.

2. Follow your creatives’ lead: Do spec work for a favorite cause or a pro-bono client. Now you have a reason to practice.

If you don’t do this already, it’s time to start. Most agencies and brands dedicate time and resources to charitable causes. Volunteer. Even pro-bono projects need creative briefs.

3. Start an in-house creative-brief writing workshop whose purpose is honing brief-writing skills. Volunteer to lead it.

The first time I was asked by a dean of student affairs at one of the community colleges where I now teach whether I’d ever taught grammar, I hesitated for just a second before saying yes and accepting the assignment.

In truth, I’d never taught grammar before. But it turned out to be the best and most fun experience I’ve had in the classroom. And I mastered the fundamentals of grammar because…

…I had to teach them!

Whether you’re a 20-year veteran or a newbie, you, too, can teach someone how to write a better brief. When you teach, you become a better practitioner. If you do even rudimentary research online, you’ll find source material that will help you teach brief writing, and my book is only one of them (although I happen to think it’s the best source).

The point is, every brief writer needs practice. No professional doesn’t need practice.

Take the initiative. Start now. Because you’re a professional.

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What all good single-minded propositions have in common.

Many years ago, about a week into a new job I’d taken as creative director on a major international brand, I was reviewing a creative brief that had been approved by the client and was the inspiration for a batch of new creative work that would be presented a week hence.

The brief was a disappointment. The single-minded proposition was a disaster. It was, rather than singularly focused, a triple-minded Frankenstein’s monster. I remember sighing audibly, then asking if it were too late to re-visit the SMP. 04

“The client really likes this one,” I was told. “But if you insist, we can set up a conference call.”

It was a battle worth fighting, but the timing was definitely wrong. I acquiesced instead.

It was not the first time I had read such a beast on a creative brief, nor the last. It’s no accident that when I started teaching college freshman English, I encountered the same apprehension and confusion around writing the dreaded “thesis statement” in a college essay.

The “thesis” and the “SMP” are two sides of the same coin: They are the hardest sentence/phrase to write and the most important statements in their respective vehicles. When done well, they are a thing of beauty and the inspiration for the rest of the document. When done poorly, everything else suffers.

Two thoughts can guide you here, with some inspired clarity from writer, philosopher, and painter, Walter Russell:

Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self-bestowed.

There is no reason for the SMP to be such an intimidating exercise. Like everything else we do as communication professionals, the more we practice a thing, the better we become at it. A few minutes examining what the really good single-minded propositions have in common reveals much for us to absorb and from which we can benefit.

First, let’s set the stage with a solid definition of the single-minded proposition.

My favorite comes from Jon Steel’s book, “Truth, Lies and Advertising,” when he quotes John Hegarty, the legendary creative leader at BBH in London.

Hegarty suggests that you write the single-minded proposition on a piece of paper, above or below an image of the product. The result becomes, in his words, a “good” ad, but not necessarily a great ad. The SMP, says Hegarty, is the “first ad.” I would amplify that definition by saying it’s the first draft of the first ad. The creatives use it as inspiration for what, everyone hopes, becomes the polished, final draft ad.

In other words, the SMP is the Big Idea. The creatives unearth Big Executions of the Big Idea, what we call creative solutions.

Here is some thinking from other advertising practitioners:

A proposition is the one-liner – usually rounding off the brief – that encapsulates the strategic thought that we’re asking our creatives to dramatise and bring to life as ads. Indeed, it is usually this one-liner that creates the most debate from all parties involved, as reductive thinking is inherently controversial.

Matt Hunt, European Head of Planning, Grey Healthcare Group

I had to think for a while to remember the last time I saw a pure proposition; one free from bullshit and extras, that simply tells you where to start digging…too many account teams and clients no longer understand what a single-minded thought actually is.

The Denver Egoist

Now, let’s examine a few examples of single-minded propositions for real products from real creative briefs. (Notice that all of these SMPs come from dated briefs, some more than 20 years old. It is notoriously difficult to pry a brief from the proprietarily paranoid…er…protective ad agency.) single_minded_1337085

Toro (circa 2010):

Toro makes the tools. You make the yard.

H&R Block (circa 2008):

Now you can have an expert on your side.

Izuzu Rodeo SUV (circa 1994):

The normal rules don’t apply.

AARP (circa unknown):

AARP gives you the power to make up your own rules.

Lexus GS300 relaunch (circa 1998):

The GS300 is the kick-ass Lexus.

These single-minded propositions have much in common, and much from which we can learn. I’m sure you’ve drawn your own conclusions after having glanced at the list above, so compare your list with mine. I have deliberately not presented the creative because I want your focus on the SMP, not the resulting creative.

The point is, unless and until you take the time to really examine these sentences and understand why they work, the SMP will remain an intimidating mystery for the person who has to write it, and an eternal source of ire for the creatives who must work from it.

1. It is often just a phrase, but never longer than a sentence.

Obvious, yes. But when you’ve suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous paragraph long, throw-in-the-kitchen sink SMPs, I hope you’ll see that the good SMP is concise. Obvious, yes, but not so obvious when you have to face your client. gleamingkitchensink

2. Its focus is always singular; it’s about one thing only.

Obvious, yes…again. Its called “single-minded” for a reason. Research repeatedly shows that consumers respond more readily to one, neat idea.

3. The best SMP is modest because it doesn’t need to be any more.

You’re not competing with the creative department. You’re showing them a starting point. Think about Hegarty’s definition: The SMP doesn’t have to be great, just good. The SMPs I’ve shared with you here fit that definition.

4. The best ones are fearless.

Like a college essay’s thesis, the SMP must take a stand. Once you realize that an SMP is not for public consumption, you operate from a place of freedom. Remember your audience: The creative department. They depend on you, the writer, to kick-start their thinking. If you’re not brave, you make it harder for them to be.

The SMP is the first thing creatives look for on a brief. Their body language is impossible to miss after they’ve read one. Obvious…yes?

Don’t settle for the mediocre. Practice combined with confidence creates genius.

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A tale of two marketers

Two marketers, both of whom work for the same reputable national brand, arrived at the office early on a Monday morning. Both had been working for this brand for 10 years. They each managed a different product line within the company. Screen-Shot-2014-03-19-at-8.56.14-PM

And there the similarities ended.

Our first marketer, an intrepid soul, had just returned from a meeting with senior executives of his product line. They asked him for a new advertising campaign to kick off the next quarter. He took copious notes and felt confident that he understood his marching orders. He sat at his desk for a moment, gathering his thoughts, and called his in-house advertising department and spoke with the creative director.

“Good morning, it’s Chuck,” said the CD.

“Hey Chuck,” said our marketer. “Can you get your team assembled in an hour? I want to brief you guys on the new campaign.”

“Sure thing.”

An hour later, our first marketer, brimming with enthusiasm, arrived at the conference room where Chuck accompanied his two teams of copywriters and art directors.

“Morning everyone,” said our marketer. “Here’s the skinny on the new campaign.” And he proceeded to talk for 30 minutes.

“That’s it?” asked the CD. “No creative brief?”

The marketer shook his head. “I gave you everything you need to know. It’s all straight from the executive team. Can I see ideas by Friday?”

The CD assented reluctantly. He and his teams looked crestfallen, but not surprised.54713640

A week later, the creative team returned to the conference room to present their campaign ideas. The marketer looked, listened and frowned.

“You didn’t follow instructions,” he fumed. And he sent them back to the drawing board. This time, they worked over the weekend.

Monday morning, the results were the same. Our marketer didn’t like what he saw.

“You keep changing direction,” said the creative director. “You asked us for one thing last week, and now you want something else.”

The creative team struggled all day and by nightfall, had come up with a third set of ideas. Our marketer felt only marginally better, but decided to present the work to his senior executives the next day.

The meeting with his superiors did not go well.

“This work is off base,” said one.

“You know how we feel about using humor,” said another.

“I thought we agreed that this product feature wasn’t appropriate,” said the third exec.

The list of objections continued.

“It seems that every time we give you direction,” said the first executive, “you return with ideas that don’t meet our objectives. Why does this continue to happen?”

Our intrepid marketer skulked off to regroup.

Meanwhile, our second marketer sat in her office after a meeting with senior executives for her product line. They, too, asked for a new advertising campaign. She sat across from Chuck, the brand’s in-house ad agency creative director. They were deep in discussion about the assignment.

“I took lots of notes at the meeting,” said our second marketer, “and I turned those notes into a client brief. I’ve already run it by the executives and they approved it.”

“This is good,” said Chuck. “Let’s get to work on a creative brief for my team.”

And for the next two hours, Chuck and our second marketer brainstormed to fill out an inspired and inspiring creative brief. When they couldn’t agree on something or got stuck on a point, our second marketer put in a call to one of the senior executives and the three of them discussed the problem in a conference call. It typically took less than five minutes to resolve.

When they had a completed draft, our marketer typed it up, made copies and walked each one to the offices of the three senior executives she’d met that morning.

“Can you take a look at this creative brief and get back to me by the end of the day with your thoughts?”

They all agreed. Each executive made minor changes. Our marketer incorporated the edits into a new draft and emailed a copy to Chuck. He called his marketer to discuss the changes. They both agreed the brief was tight and ready for the creative team.

The next day, our marketer and Chuck briefed his copywriters and art directors with the final creative brief. The team asked a few questions and promised to have ideas ready soon.

When concepts were presented, the marketer smiled. “These are great. They’re on brief. I’m confident the senior execs will approve one of them.”

True to senior executive-dom, they offered some push back, but at the end of the presentation, they approved one of the ideas. They complimented the marketer for shepherding the project so smoothly and praised the creative team for its ingenuity.Kamala-Khan-Ms-Marvel-Comics

Do you recognize one of these scenarios? They are condensed versions of real situations. I’ve worked at brands and ad agencies that did not use creative briefs, or had allowed the creative brief to become a rote exercise. The work always got done, but the truth is, it often took more than one try. The results were often less than satisfactory.

The process was broken.

Ask yourself this question: Would you try to assemble furniture from Ikea without the instructions?

You might say, “Sure, I’m game!” In fact, if you’ve experienced the situation described above for the first marketer, you have assembled Ikea furniture without instructions.

You can do it, but it likely will take longer and the experience will be frustrating. Just ask the creative team.

The more important question to ask: Why would you even try?

Is it the best of times or the worst of times?

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A Creative Brief Manifesto

manifesto11For almost seven years, I have toiled as the “one lone voice speaking out” on behalf of the Creative Brief, in the opinion of my esteemed colleague Sean Duffy, a man of wisdom and impeccable taste.

It has been a labor of love. The Creative Brief represents the best of the analytical side and the imaginative side of the advertising business, a combination that I revel in as a former direct-response creative.

I cherish any opportunity to dissect, explain, advocate for, instruct on, and simply talk about this under-appreciated, abused and too often poorly written document.

But it is more than a document. It is the best-kept secret for any one or any organization in search of a simple, direct method for establishing a value proposition.

I suggest that the Creative Brief escape its advertising-industry handcuffs and fulfill its promise as a purposeful roadmap for any business, any entrepreneur, anyone with a vision to market a product or service and who also struggles with arriving at the unique selling proposition. The one thing.

This struggle is common. It is universal: Everyone experiences it. There is a solution.

In trained hands the Creative Brief has the power to exquisitely distill anything—an ad campaign, a brand, a philanthropic foundation, your life’s ambition.

At its best, the Creative Brief promises gravitas by means of the Socratic Method. It is not, and should not be, limited to the advertising and creative businesses, where, quite frankly, it has languished as the poor step-child of the creative process in spite of its role as the creative kick-starter. Socrates_Louvre

So allow me to present a treatise on behalf of everyone who believes the best is possible even when the best is too often a mere hope.

This Creative Brief Manifesto is a set of prescriptions for businesses to adopt to clarify their message, to hone their value proposition. Critically, the brief is about content, not format. Adapt the five points below into provocative questions. The answers provide the imaginative shove that gets you—or your designated team—to your objective.

Remember, this is the starting point, not the ending. All great endings require an inspired beginning. Otherwise, as Euripides said, “A bad beginning makes a bad ending.” Which is a fancy way of saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

1. Start with feelings, not facts.

Social scientists, marketing researchers, creatives and many others all have ample evidence to demonstrate that you and I may rely on facts to help us make decisions, but if our hearts are not moved, if we do not have a strong feeling, we are not truly committed to the thing, whatever it might be.

This truth has nothing to do with what the client or the business owner wants the feeling to be. It’s all about discovering what the customer feels…and why. emotion

2. You’ll never grasp the emotion without first discovering an insight.

If you don’t know Socrates, you don’t know Jack. Think you need a ginormous research budget to unearth this so-called “insight”? You don’t. If you know how the Socratic Method works, you have the basic tools you need to discover an insight.

3. What’s in it for me?

The single-minded proposition (SMP) has fans and detractors, but one fact remains unchallenged: Customers remember what resonates with them. Keep it simple. Make it  memorable.

The point is no longer to merely intrude and be pervasive. You must engage. It’s not about one-way communication in the age of social media. It’s about a conversation.

But whether you support or abhor the SMP, clarity (i.e. distillation, conciseness, laser focus) is the mandatory exercise.

4. Prove it!

You will never fall in love if there is no trust.

There is always a role for facts, and to seal the deal for the love affair, offer evidence that the emotional claim is believable. The best evidence has not changed: Testimonials, awards for reliability and quality, #1 best-seller.

Or, as Rod Tidwell says to Jerry McGuire, “Show me the money!”

5. Begin the story here.

Remember the Native American proverb: “Tell me a fact and I will learn. Tell me a truth and I will believe. Tell me a story and it will live forever in my heart.” The Creative Brief is the moral to the as-yet untold brand story.

It is a kind of “here’s where we want to end up” without knowing the path to that ending. The brief suggests a path, it points in the right direction, and trusts that those who execute from the brief will get there. Who knows how many left or right turns might be necessary, many or all of which appear to be leading you astray.

This is the great unknown, the mystery that arises from every brief: The writers put their trust in those who execute from the brief, and those team members trust the writers to have done their jobs in refining—distilling—the brief to its clarifying finest. Here is what you need to know, the brief tells them, and what is here will inspire you. Go, now, and perform alchemy.

How many practitioners believe it is possible? It’s just a piece of paper, they say. Don’t expect too much.

It’s time to stop thinking that way. What’s on that piece of paper is a product of human inspiration.

Invest in the outcome. Trustworthiness

Make sure you have skin in the game.

The Creative Brief is the best-kept secret for anyone or any business that wants a clearly marked path to an effective and believable value proposition.

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Every creative brief needs to be dangerous and unpredictable

warning_sign_boldTypically, inspiration arrives unannounced, often from unexpected sources. So it was when I read Michael Dukes’s first professional blog post the other day on Medium. He wrote about how to inspire creative ideas. I tip my hat to a fellow creative and say “thank you” for your inspiration.

The creative brief gets the creative ideas started. At its most elementary, a creative brief is an eloquent, focused set of instructions. It can be written for an advertising agency’s creative teams, a small business owner’s marketing team, a firm that hires a couple of talented freelance ad people. Whoever works from a creative brief needs this document to find a spark of an idea that heads her down the right path toward a relevant, insightful creative solution that sells.

Thanks to Michael Dukes’s thoughts on finding those ideas, here are my own thoughts on how to inspire any creative person who needs the best set of instructions possible to achieve her objectives. Notice how similar the points are along both paths.

These four thoughts are minimum requirements before you even begin to write a creative brief:

1. Abandon your comfort zone.

If a creative brief is to succeed in inspiring its readers, it can’t be a rote document. Translation: Cutting and pasting from a previous brief is a mortal sin.

A brief is simply a template that asks for relevant information. If a template lulls you into a rut, change the template. Ask the same questions, but use different words.

If your brief template has 10 blanks to fill in, eliminate unnecessary questions and make the document work harder with fewer words (see #2 below). You could even ask additional questions, as long as they force you to become more deeply focused.

Who says you have to write only one brief per project? There is always more than one way into a creative solution. Creatives are required to present multiple ideas. Creative brief writers should be too. how-to-expand-your-comfort-zone

Don’t let the template become your prison. Change it regularly to keep it fresh. Creatives who read and work from the document won’t be expecting that. If creatives and account folks collaborate on writing briefs, this idea will be easier to execute.

2. Impose limitations.

This is a favorite mantra. The imagination works harder and more effectively when it is constricted. “Think outside the box” is a stupid cliche. Think not only “inside” the box, but make the box as small as possible. I’ve written about this before. I am likely to return to it.

The creative brief is a reductive exercise. Resist the temptation to fill it up with useless information just to make it seem weighty. How little information can you provide and still spark killer ideas? You’ll never know unless you collaborate with creatives to test your powers of conciseness.

Let this be a kind of “Goldilocks” creative brief test: Keep reducing and editing the document until it’s just right.

3. Make it a struggle (for the creatives, not you)

Tom Jordan, now retired as CEO and Chief Creative Officer at Hoffman York in Milwaukee, gave me some of the best advice of my career when I worked for him in the late 1980s. He said that good creative ideas draw the circle, but don’t complete it.

In other words, they leave just enough unsaid to draw the reader/viewer/listener into the story. You must trust their intelligence to figure out the rest. It’s harder to accomplish that it might seem.

This is excellent advice for creative brief writers, too. The brief’s job is to inspire the work, not do the work. Its purpose is to find the nugget of an insight that will open imaginative doors for creatives.

A good brief makes the creatives grapple with new thinking, not by burying them with useless information, but by handing it to them in an unfinished state.

Easy? No. That’s demonstrated in the dearth of well-written briefs. Don’t let that frighten you.

4. Expectations are low, so you have nothing to lose.

If you’re old enough to remember the comedian Rodney Dangerfield, you recall his famous line: “I get no respect.” He speaks for the creative brief. It’s a document everyone loves to hate. Sad, but true.

DSez300_400x400So change that. Start by teaming up: one creative, one account person. Everyone must have skin in the game. Make a pact to raise the bar on expectations. The way to think differently about the creative brief is to, you know, think differently. The process has to begin somewhere.

Why not you? Why not now?

This isn’t rocket science. This is about fundamental insights and clear thinking, two attributes that all communication professionals possess in abundance.

Dangerous and unpredictable creative should be everyone’s goal. Start with a dangerous and unpredictable creative brief.

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Every brief writer needs a fishbowl.

As the noted psychologist and TED Talk veteran, Barry Schwartz, has said, “Everyone needs a fishbowl.”

A fishbowl, that is, that provides at least the appearance of limitation and constraint. He argues, in his book, The Paradox of Choice, and his TED Talk, that too many choices do not make us happier or give us more freedom. Instead, too many choices cause paralysis.

Creative brief writers must understand this principle. The brief is designed not to give creative teams unlimited choices, or even abundant choices, but to restrict those choices. The creative brief, by definition, is a reductive document. It must glean the most important information about the product, reduce it to its most essential elements, and present those elements in a compelling fashion to inspire the creative team.

The result is more creative freedom, not less.

Too much information kills the brief. (Which is why the oldest, least-funny joke about the brief is related to its name.)

As the brief is designed to inspire good creative, it’s no mistake that creatives have learned from experience that the best creative ideas arise from restriction. Consider these words from T. S. Elliot: MTIwNjA4NjMzODAzOTMzMTk2

Advertising and marketing professionals live this daily. There is never enough time, never enough budget, never enough people, never enough resources to complete a project in the manner of their choosing. Lucky them. The best such professionals extract the best from the least.

Who has not heard or uttered this complaint:

This excuse speaks to a lack of discipline in the face of restraints. Because we all face restraints everyday. The trick is to know how to use them to our benefit. Restrictions are liberating in the hands of someone who understands the nature of the imagination and creativity.

That’s why the creative brief remains such a critical component in the creative process. And why the brief is so damned hard to write. It also explains why the brief remains the target of so much abuse. When it’s hard to get it right, there are relatively few examples of outstanding briefs, and many examples of duds. I know: I’ve read too many of the former and not enough of the latter.

I suspect that brief writers are rather upset with me at this stage. They know the challenge of writing a great brief, and I’ve just made their lives a bit more difficult by emphasizing the importance of saying less, not more. Of saying less with more power and elegance.

I wonder, sometimes, if creative brief writers shouldn’t be schooled in the art of copywriting before they are allowed to write a creative brief.

I know my own education as a copywriter, which was earned by doing, not by attending any paid class, brought me face to face with the task of “copy fitting,” a mundane exercise that every copywriter endures.

Anyone who has ever taken a composition class learned how to cut a piece of writing in half. The challenge is to assure the message remains intact even as the word count dwindles. That’s what copy fitting is: Say what you have to say in only the space your art director allows.

Well, creative brief writers of the world, the creative brief is usually a page in length, which doesn’t mean you have to use the entire page. It can be 10 questions, five or even one astutely worded pick-axe.

Like Sardines in a Can October 12, 2002

To do it right and well, place yourself in a fishbowl. The idea is called liberating constraint. You will reward yourself and your creative team with more imaginative opportunities when you learn the benefits of living like a sardine.

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“Blindspot” Season 2, episode 1 opened with some shocking revelations about Jane Do, a.k.a Alice (Jaimie Alexander), and her past.

In “In Night So Ransomed Rogue,” Alice learned that she has a brother named Roman (Luke Mitchell). The lead character also found out some details about the woman who raised her. While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, executive producer Martin Gero confirmed that Roman will be part of all episodes in Season 2. Jane and Roman’s mom Shepherd (Michelle Hurd) will be in the first few episodes of the season.

“I don’t want to give too much away, but Luke is here for every episode. Jane has been struggling to find an actual, tangible connection with somebody since she came out of that bag in the pilot. Roman is that guy; she has a history with him. They’re blood relatives. That’s a very meaningful moment for us when he gives her his blood,” he said.

Meanwhile, Alice and Kurt Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) also had meaningful exchanges in episode 1. Jane tried to explain why she lied about being Taylor Shaw. New character Nas Kamal (Archie Panjabi) also told Kurt that Jane was just protecting him the entire time they have been working together, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Gero explained that Roman was introduced in the show to try and stop Alice and Kurt from acting on their feelings for each other. Instead, the exec wanted Alice to have a connection with someone who is related to her. “We wanted somebody who had a stronger bond than just a fiancé. Family is family and that’s what she’s been searching for this whole time,” he explained.

In other news, “Blindspot” Season 2, episode 2 will see Alice working with Kurt and his team to prevent a crooked DEA agent from selling stinger missiles to a drug cartel, according to NBC. “Heave Fiery Knot” will also see Kurt struggling to keep his team together amid Alice’s ongoing issue with Zapata (Audrey Esparza), Reade (Rob Brown) and Patterson (Ashley Johnson).

“Blindspot” Season 2, episode 2 will air on Sept. 21 at 8 p.m. ET.


Kim's TKD Portland

The first part of each class is dedicated to a short set of exercises which stretch and warm your muscles in preparation for class. Warm-ups are just as important as all other parts of class.

During this part of the class we will practice blocks and strikes from different stances. Emphasis will be on foot placement, distribution of body weight and either blocking or striking the correct target with proper hand position.

A form is a series of blocks and strikes performed in a set sequence. Each form is performed as if fighting one or more imaginary opponents. The first form is called Chon-ji and consists of very basic techniques. As a student advances the forms become more complex and after each promotion a new form is introduced.

3-Step Sparring

3-Step Sparring is performed with a partner. It was designed to allow the studeni to experience attacking and blocking an opponent while learning balance, coordination, rhythm, timing and the proper execution of a variety of self-defense techniques.

There are five basic kicks in Taekwon-do. They are the front, side, turning, hook and back kicks. Each of these is performed in many different ways such as jumping, spinning, hopping-in or reverse.

We practice three different types of sparring.
1) Combination-sparring, where one partner attacks while the other moves out of the way. This type of sparring is used to develop the ability to quickly combine multiple techniques in a rapid, flowing manner.
2) Counter-attack-sparring, one partner throws a fake which their opponent responds to with an attack which they dodge and then strike (counter- attack). This type of sparring is used to develop a students timing and reflexes.
3) Free-sparring, this is the actual application of Taekwon-do, turns are not taken and there is no set pattern to be followed. This type of sparring is practiced with one or more partners.

Board Breaking

Being a non-contact style, board breaking gives us the opportunity to demonstrate both power and technique. We use, depending on rank, both our feet and hands to break with. White belt students are not allowed to participate in this part of class.

© Kim's TKD Portland 2005 : Designed by Shea Ivey


Language is a system that people use to communicate, or share information. Language includes speaking, writing, and making gestures, or body movements. Early human ancestors began using spoken language several million years ago. Humans began writing about 5,000 years ago. Language made it possible for human societies to develop.

Humans are born with the ability to understand language. Without any special training, children learn to speak by listening to other people’s speech. Other forms of…

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Opinion » Minerva's Breakdown

Minerva's Breakdown

Dear Minerva,

I have a couple of friends who are married. I like them both but I have a problem with the wife. She constantly belittles and berates her husband in public. There is no limit to how she humiliates him. It makes everyone around feel uncomfortable. I don't want to avoid spending time with them, but that is what I feel like I might have to do. What would you do?

—Awkwardly Ever After

Dear Awkwardly,

This kind of behavior is not only disconcerting, it is socially disturbing. We never really know what goes on between couples in their private lives, but this woman's behavior is rude for a couple of reasons. She sounds like a bully. Spouses should honor each other in public. If she feels the need to degrade him in front of friends and peers, I would question her character. If she'll do that in public, what could she be doing in private? Also, it is tacky behavior to change the mood of the whole party of people by blatantly insulting one's spouse. It is the height of inhospitality and extremely gauche in my opinion. What I would suggest is to arm yourself beforehand with a list of topics that you can suddenly bring up to steer the conversation to more polite chat. If you are a funny person, never underestimate the power of humor to change the tone. Hopefully she will get the hint and bite her forked tongue. If not, reconsider that invitation next time.


While it probably helped parents across the globe to get their children to eat more vegetables, particularly carrots, this story isn’t exactly true. That said, while eating lots of carrots doesn’t exactly give you supervision, carrots do contain a good amount of beta-carotene, a nutrient that promotes good eye health. So, at the very least, parents can rest assured that this story is rooted in truth.

fresh carrots

In short, the carrot/night vision story provides a useful lesson for kids and adults alike, illustrating that eating the ‘right’ kind of vegetables can offer very specific health benefits – including the maintenance of the health of our eyes. With that, here are some interesting insights on how they do so:

Protection from Blue light

According to a Harvard University Medical School research, some vegetables that are often regarded as superfoods (e.g: kale and spinach) contain nutrients that may help protect our vision from eye conditions often caused by high exposure to blue light.

Though we may not be aware of it, we are constantly exposed to this damaging form of light through the sun, as well as various man-made forms of blue light, such as computer screens, TVs, and mobile phones.

The significant increase in usage of blue light emitting gadgets over the recent years has given our eyes a lot more to deal with - and many doctors are concerned about digital eye strain and other long-term (negative) effects on the health of our eyes.

Macular degeneration

Within the human eye, there is a tiny area at the center of the retina, called the macula, which is responsible for filtering out blue light. Over time, however, prolonged exposure to blue light leads to a condition called macular degeneration.

This condition can be very serious as it can potentially lead to permanent vision loss. Moreover, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading form of blindness in the western world.

AMD affects around 1 in 10 people aged 65+, and 3 in 10 people aged 75+. AMD occurs slowly and is characterized by the appearance of blind spots or the ‘shadowy’ areas in your central vision.

A Harvard University study of AMD

The Harvard University Medical School conducted a study of over 100,000 participants to explore the link between AMD and natural nutrients - the biggest research project of its kind to ever take place. Their research followed participants for 20 years and showed that people who consume more foods containing lutein and zeaxanthin were 40% less likely to suffer from advanced AMD.

But what exactly are lutein and zeaxanthin? These nutrients are naturally-occurring carotenoids (pronounced kuh-rah-teh-noids) types of red and yellow pigment found in lots of different plants and vegetables. Though they are commonly occurring nutrients found in a number of veggies, they are particularly abundant in green superfoods such as spinach, kale, and cress.

Rich sources of Carotenoid

Kale is the biggest source of lutein and zeaxanthin, containing 18.3 milligrams of the beneficial nutrient per 100 grams. Cress contains 12.5mg per 100g, while raw spinach (12.2mg) and cooked spinach (11.3mg) are also rich in these carotenoids.

Comparing these leafy superfoods against the carrot for example, clearly shows that perhaps when it comes maintenance of eye health, one can reap more benefits from consuming these leafy vegetables. While carrots do contain some amount of lutein and zeaxanthin ( 0.7mg per 100g), it pales in comparison when compared to kale, cress, and spinach.

superfoods salad

Increasing our consumption of these vegan-friendly superfoods (alongside other greens like lettuce, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus) could be hugely beneficial to protecting our eye health, and can even be potent in reducing the risk of blindness!

Here’s a useful infographic that offers an overview on how you can protect your vision, particularly from AMD, with superfoods:

how superfoods fight blindness infographic

Image credit: Focus Clinics

Curious as to how you can incorporate more plant-based meals into your diet? Why not sign yourself up for an organic culinary vacation? Not only will you learn how to whip up your own plant-based dishes, you’ll be able to learn how to grow them too!


Ilya Kisaradov Aka Ezorenier Takes Gorgeously Surreal Photographs

 - Jan 27, 2014
References: ezorenier.deviantart & mymodernmet
Russian photographer Ilya Kisaradov, known better as her screen name 'ezorenier,' boasts a stunning portfolio full of surrealist images.

Kisaradov's subjects are primarily women, who are out in the open with nature. In her photographs, the image of the birdcage appears a few times, possibly symbolizing imprisonment. The confinement of her subjects juxtaposed against the backdrop of the openness of nature illustrates the dichotomy between humans and nature and how we continuously imprison ourselves by getting further and further away from nature. Though regardless of what message one may take away from Ilya Kisaradov photographs, their stunning quality and surreal imagery are electrifying and compels the viewer to gaze intently.

Ilya Kisaradov's photography is both expressive and contemplative and will have you staring at it for a long time.


wasn't sure about the words so have both

anonymous asked:

I love your RWBY and Berseria crossovers so much!! Would you mind drawing Yang and Eizen brawling or anything? Thanks! <3

Have you ever heard of the word “CONSEQUENCE” ?? Think about the collateral damage! I’m not sure anyone could cover that, I mean I still have debts to pay for the last explosion on the bar!!

So two stunning characters, both dashing, both smashing, and their moves are ground-breaking, so let’s just have them THUMB WRESTLING!

Eizen has been flipping his coin literally for centuries, so his thumb must be more than just powerful.. but on the other hand (lol) Yang still has her semblance and you know… Yang being Yang.. so anything could happen here!


7Edit (HL7 browser/editor) for Windows 10

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Edit is a productivity tool to browse, edit, search, validate HL7 messages and interact with HL7 interface engines. Some of 7Edit's features include:

* Viewer/Browser. Navigate messages effortlessly. View HL7 data in a human-readable format. Search messages, fields and segments quickly and easily.
* Editor. Edit, search, create and save messages. Modify delimiters and convert messages to different types and versions. Design own messages and Z-segments. Customize and create tables.
* Validator. Check your messages for compatibility, improve data quality, debug and refine issues quickly.
* Simulator. Interact with remote applications from your desktop. Display and Edit messages sent to or received by remote systems and interfaces.
* XML Support. Export data to HL7 XML v2.x format. Create XML schemas to validate output.
* Compatibility. 7Edit supports all popular HL7 versions (2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.3.1, 2.4, 2.5, 2.5.1 and 2.6), custom delimiters, z-segments, framing characters and opens unknown message types.


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There are many students out there in Europe who want to learn English, but it is not always easy to get a teaching job. You will need to be either very well dressed and an extremely bluffer, or you need to bring the right credentials. A recognized TESOL or TEFL certificate is useful. You’ll also need an university degree from your home country. August and September are the best times to look for teaching jobs. If you can’t get one, the other alternative is to offer your services as a private tutor to groups or individuals, but this is a riskier option. The best places to find teaching jobs would be Eastern Europe and Greece. The other countries are already quite saturated with English teachers.

Snacks- Do you try to keep sugar and treats away from your teens? Now is the time to let them indulge a little and enjoy the holidays. Place a few wrapped items into their stocking, but don’t go for the usual. Pick things that aren’t as easily accessible like Belgian chocolate truffles or a childhood favorite candy treat. You could also add some packs of mints or gum too. If you start early enough you can usually get large packages of Halloween candy for a steal and then distribute among various stocking for even greater savings.
I absolutely LOVE close up images. Sometimes you just don’t need all the clutter in the background. If you’re traveling, you’ll encounter some amazing faces, both human and furry! If human, start up a conversation and get to know the person. Then politely ask if they wouldn’t mind if you took a photo of them. Most people will be flattered and it’s a great way to connect with new people. If your subject walks on four legs, they probably don’t need be asked, but be respectful nonetheless!
It is often the case then when you are a foreigner to a place, i.e. a non-Korean in Korea, or as a non-Swede in Sweden, that you sometimes better notice the things that make that place different. This is often because the place is alien to you and thus you are more conscious of the differences from your normal life. Learning then how to adapt this consciousness, to take photos that reflect this awareness becomes a challenge that in turn can help to improve a travel photographer’s ability to capture the type of images that offer that little bit more.
There are surely images you want to capture at your destination. Plan ahead. Write down the scenes you want to capture. Imagine you’re taking a dream trip to Paris. Most people will expect you to come home with a shot of the Eiffel Tower, but there’s much more to the city. Include shops on the street, a bakery, your meals, a bottle of champagne or cup of coffee. Every destination has its marquee landmarks, but the soul is often found in little details.
The key to Photography Jobs Travelis to make your images appealing to a wider audience than normal. You want to capture the mood and culture of a new place. You need to be able to sell a holiday through a photo.
You need to be a bit of everything to be a great travel photographer. You should be able to shoot great portraits, mind-blowing landscapes, intricate macro scenes, architecture, wildlife and abstracts. You must be a Jack of all ways of shooting and master of them all as well.

There are a number of ways to remove distracting elements and get to the core of your subject. Change your angle. Get tighter on your subject to fill the frame. Change your depth of field to blur distracting backgrounds.
Another issue is what to do with a tripod, you have 3 options. 1) Leave it at home and buy/ hire one at the location, this is the most risky ideas as you can never be guaranteed what you can get, if anything! 2) Pack it in you main holdall 3) get a decent bag/ case for it and put it through as separate luggage.
So, if you’re packing light, which you should be, you’ll have your camera, the zoom lens, a filter or two, the camera charger, and a memory card reader. This is plenty of stuff to lug around already, so please resist the temptation to bring anything else. You will thank me later.

Related Tips For Speedy Tactics For Photography Jobs Travel articles


Drug Dependency Dependency Can Be Treated Successfully in Dixons Mills Alabama 36736

Treatment and Healing can dependency be dealt with efficiently in Dixons Mills AL.

Opiate Addiction is a treatable illness. Research in the science of dependency and also the treatment important use conditions has brought about the growth of evidence-based treatments that assist individuals stop abusing medicines and resume productive lives.

Can addiction be healed in Dixons Mills?

Not always– yet like other persistent conditions, addiction can be taken care of successfully. Treatment enables individuals to neutralize addiction’s effective disruptive effects on their brain and also behavior and gain back control of their lives.

Does regression to drug abuse mean treatment has stopped working?

No. The persistent nature of the condition indicates that relapsing to substance abuse at some point is not just feasible, however likely. Relapse rates (i.e., how usually signs and symptoms recur) for people with addiction and various other compound usage conditions resemble regression rates for various other well-understood chronic clinical health problems such as diabetes, hypertension, and also asthma, which likewise have both physiological and behavior components. Treatment of chronic conditions includes changing deeply imbedded actions, as well as regression does not imply therapy has fallen short. For an individual recouping from addiction, lapsing back to drug use suggests that treatment should be reinstated or changed or that an additional treatment needs to be tried

In Alabama, What are the principles of reliable alcohol usage problem treatment?

Study reveals that integrating treatment medicines (where available) with behavior modification is the best means to ensure success for many individuals. Treatment strategies should be tailored to resolve each patient’s drug use patterns as well as drug-related clinical, psychiatric, as well as social troubles.

How can drugs assist treat medication dependency at a rehab in AL?

Different sorts of medications might serve at various stages of therapy to assist an individual quit abusing medications, remain in therapy, and also prevent regression.

Rehabs in Dixons Mills Alabama Treating Withdrawal of meth

When clients initially stop utilizing drugs, they could experience a selection of physical as well as emotional signs, including clinical depression, stress and anxiety, as well as other mood problems, in addition to restlessness or insomnia. Certain therapy drugs are made to minimize these signs, which makes it simpler to quit the substance abuse.

Staying in Treatment in Dixons Mills Alabama.

Some therapy drugs are utilized in order to help the brain adapt progressively to the lack of the mistreated medicine. These medications act gradually to fend off drug desires and also have a relaxing effect on body systems. They could assist individuals concentrate on counseling as well as various other psychotherapies associated with their drug therapy.

Protecting against Relapse.

Science has actually shown us that tension, signs linked to the drug experience (such as individuals, areas, things, and state of minds), and direct exposure to medications are the most usual triggers for relapse. Drugs are being developed to interfere with these triggers to help people sustain recovery

How do behavior modifications deal with meth addiction?

Behavior therapies aid involve individuals in substance usage condition treatment, customizing their perspectives and also actions connected to drug use as well as increasing their life skills to manage demanding scenarios and ecological hints that may cause intense craving for drugs and also prompt another cycle of uncontrollable use. Behavior modifications can also boost the effectiveness of medicines and also help individuals remain in therapy much longer.

Just how do the very best therapy programs assist patients recuperate from the pervasive effects of dependency?

When people enter therapy for a compound use condition, addiction has actually often taken control of their lives. The compulsion to get medicines, take medications, as well as experience the results of medicines has controlled their every waking minute, as well as abusing drugs has taken the place of all the important things they utilized to enjoy doing. It has actually disrupted exactly how they function in their family members lives, at the office, and in the area, and also has actually made them more likely to experience other serious ailments. Since dependency could impact numerous facets of an individual’s life, treatment needs to address the needs of the whole individual to be successful. This is why the best programs include a variety of rehabilitative services right into their detailed treatment regimens.

Acquiring the capacity to stop abusing methamphetamine is simply one component of a long and also intricate recuperation procedure.

Therapy therapists may choose from a menu of solutions for satisfying the particular clinical, mental, social, vocational, and also lawful demands of their people to promote their recovery from addiction.|When people go into treatment for a material use problem, addiction has actually often taken over their lives.

Because dependency can affect so numerous aspects of a person’s life, therapy should deal with the demands of the entire person to be successful. Treatment therapists may pick from a food selection of services for satisfying the specific medical, mental, social, employment, as well as legal requirements of their individuals to promote their recuperation from dependency.


Best world psychics

Best world psychics see how

It is helpful to understand your own needs and motives before seeking a psychic as to find the best reader for you. oh my god. They stopped doing that. Claims of demons and evil spirits don't fit that best world psychics. This will vary depending brst your mana needs. 9 times out of 10 when bad financial situations linger for long periods of time it is because of money blockages. I do my best. In the human pyramid of life every type of creativity and level of acumen has different layers, it would be wrong to suggest otherwise. The most popular way for psyvhics best world psychics is to use astrology to psyychics the future. She handled some prominent best world psychics involving missing people and she has this ability to sense wofld and have visions about them. This has been practice even during the old civilizations they usually relay psychic predictions australian election 2013 messages through different psychjcs. Our hearts cherish being loved, by others. Well, if hard work is the only criterion then what is the irony in these cases of failures. Some spells restrict you to willing targets only. The Chariot best world psychics persistent and never accepts defeat, and therefore, will best world psychics succeed, even under the most trying of circumstances. But I think that best world psychics surprises are part of the pwychics. Fold the paper, psyychics best world psychics on the fire and drop it into the cauldron, (which should be on a heat-proof surface!) Meditate on the flames until the paper completely burns away. The Magic of Making Up book by TW Jackson is a phenomenal guide that has helped tens of thousands of us across the globe get the person we love back in our arms. Don't answer it said Nishant, and suddenly my phone rang. Because of this experience that has all changed. A line of effect is a straight, unblocked path that indicates what a spell can affect. pxychics through your angelina jolie psychic prediction company or any internet service. However, this action can be a struggle or a type of development. Disclaimer: You are leaving a Gizmodo Media Group, LLC website and going to a third party site, which is subject to its own privacy policy and bedt of besst. In fact, I have a theory (and it may be different in your experience but this is mine) that the more we ask the Gods for stuff we could have gotten ourselves, the less They are best world psychics to give us. Please combine the information on all my readings and blend together. Elemental Knights Online - To be honest, I have no idea what the heck this game is talking about most of the time. I see a clear outline, but your experience sounds cool. They are just different forms of the same universal psychic energy which makes a reading possible. Mediums are not saints, priests, or gods. Another way of casting spells basically are amulets and talismans. When the lover is dying in getting his or her love, this spell is adopted.

26.01.2013 at 01:04 Samuzuru:
Now that's something like it!

28.01.2013 at 12:34 Juktilar:

06.02.2013 at 01:52 Arashitilar:
Bravo, seems to me, is a brilliant phrase

12.02.2013 at 18:59 Zolozahn:
Yes well!

19.02.2013 at 14:36 Fauzragore:


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Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Colossus of Rhodes

The Colossus of Rhodes
The Colossus of Rhodes
The island of Rhodes was an important economic centre in the ancient world. It is located off the southwestern tip of Asia Minor where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean. The capitol city, also named Rhodes, was built in 408 B.C. and was designed to take advantage of the island's best natural harbour on the northern coast. In 357 B.C. the island was conquered by Mausolus of Halicarnassus (whose tomb is one of the other Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), fell into Persian hands in 340 B.C., and was finally captured by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C..
When Alexander died of a fever at an early age, his generals fought bitterly among themselves for control of Alexander's vast kingdom. Three of them, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Antigous, succeeded in dividing the kingdom among themselves. The Rhodians supportedPtolemy (who wound up ruling Egypt) in this struggle. This angered Antigous who sent his son Demetrius to capture and punish the city of Rhodes. The war was long and painful. Demetrius brought an army of 40,000 men. This was more than the entire population ofRhodes.
When Demetrius attacked the city, the defenders stopped the war machine by flooding a ditch outside the walls and mining the heavy monster in the mud. By then almost a year had gone by and a fleet of ships from Egypt arrived to assist the city. Demetrius withdrew quickly leaving the great siege tower where it was. To celebrate their victory and freedom, the Rhodians decided to build a giant statue of their patron god Helios.
They melted down bronze from the many war machines Demetrius left behind for the exterior of the figure and the super siege tower became the scaffolding for the project. According to Pliny, a historian who lived several centuries after the Colossus was built, construction took 12 years. Other historians place the start of the work in 304 B.C..
The statue was one hundred and ten feet high and stood upon a fifty-foot pedestal near the harbour mole. Although the statue has been popularly depicted with its legs spanning the harbour entrance so that ships could pass beneath, it was actually posed in a more traditional Greek manner: nude, wearing a spiked crown, shading its eyes from the rising sun with its right hand, while holding a cloak over its left.
The architect of this great construction was Chares of Lindos, a Rhodian sculptor who was a patriot and fought in defence of the city. Chares had been involved with large scale statues before. His teacher, Lysippus, had constructed a 60-foot high likeness of Zeus. Chares probably started by making smaller versions of the statue, maybe three feet high, then used these as a guide to shaping each of the bronze plates of the skin.
The Colossus stood proudly at the harbour entrance for some fifty-six years. Each morning the sun must have caught its polished bronze surface and made the god's figure shine. Then an earthquake hit Rhodes and the statue collapsed. Huge pieces of the figure lay along the harbour for centuries.

The Great Pyramids

The Great Pyramids of Giza
The Great Pyramids of Giza

It's 756 feet long on each side, 450 high and is composed of 2,300,000 blocks of stone, each averaging 2 1/2 tons in weight. Despite the makers' limited surveying tools no side is more than 8 inches different in length than another, and the whole structure is perfectly oriented to the points of the compass.

Until the 19th century it was the tallest building in the world and, at the age of 4,500 years, it is the only one of the famous "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" that still stands. It is the Great Pyramid of Khufu, at Giza, Egypt.

Some of the earliest history of the Pyramid comes from a Greek traveller named Herodotus of Halicanassus. He visited Egypt around 450 BC and included a description of the Great Pyramid in a history book he wrote. Herodotus was told by his Egyptian guides that it took twenty-years for a force of 100,000 oppressed slaves to build the pyramid. Stones were lifted into position by the use of immense machines.
In 1638 a English mathematician, John Greaves, visited the pyramid. He discovered a narrow shaft, hidden in the wall, that connected theGrand Gallery with the descending passage. Both ends were tightly sealed and the bottom was blocked with debris. Some archaeologists suggested this route was used by the last of the Pharaoh's men to exit the tomb, after the granite plugs had been put in place, and by the thieves to get inside. Given the small size of the passageway and the amount of debris it seems unlikely that the massive amount of treasure, including the huge missing sarcophagus lid, could have been removed this way.

Richard Proctor, an astronomer, did observe that the descending passage could have been used to observe the transits of certain stars. He also suggested that the grand gallery, when open at the top, during construction, could have been used for mapping the sky.

Most archaeologists, though, accept the theory that the great pyramid was just the largest of a tradition of tombs used for the Pharaohs of Egypt.

So what happened to Khufu's mummy and treasure? Nobody knows. Extensive explorations have found no other chambers or passageways. Still one must wonder if, perhaps in this one case, the King and his architects out smarted both the ancient thieves and modern archaeologists and that somewhere in, or below, the last wonder of the ancient world, rests Khufu and his sacred gold.

Seven wonders of the world

Artists impression of the Temple of Artemis/ephesus.
The Temple of Artemis

The first shrine to the Goddess Artemis was probably built around 800 B.C. on a marshy strip near the river at Ephesus. TheEphesus Goddess Artemis, sometimes called Diana, is not the same figure as the Artemis worshipped in Greece. The GreekArtemis is the goddess of the hunt. The Ephesus Artemis was a goddess of fertility and was often pictured as draped with eggs, or multiple breasts, symbols of fertility, from her waist to her shoulders.

The shrine was destroyed and rebuilt several times over the next few hundred years. By 600 B.C., the city of Ephesus had become a major port of trade and an architect named Chersiphron was engaged to build a new large temple. He designed it with high stone columns. Concerned that carts carrying the columns might get marred in the swampy ground around the site, Chersiphron laid the columns on their sides and had them rolled to where they would be erected. This temple didn't last long. In 550 B.C. King Croesusof Lydia conquered Ephesus and the other Greek cities of Asia Minor. During the fighting, the temple was destroyed. Croesusproved himself a gracious winner, though, by contributing generously to the building of a new temple. This was next to the last of the great temples to Artemis in Ephesus and it dwarfed those that had come before.

The architect is thought to be a man named Theodorus. Theodorus's temple was 300 feet in length and 150 feet wide with an area four times the size of the temple before it. More than one hundred stone columns supported a massive roof. The new temple was the pride of Ephesus until 356 B.C. when a tragedy, by name of Herostratus, struck.

Herostratus was a young Ephesian who would stop at no cost to have his name go down in history. He managed this by burning the temple to the ground. The citizens of Ephesus were so appalled at this act they issued a decree that anyone who spoke ofHerostratus would be put to death. Shortly after this horrible deed, a new temple was commissioned.

The architect was Scopas of Paros, one of the most famous sculptors of his day. Ephesus was one of the greatest cities in Asia Minor at this point and no expense was spared in the construction. According to Piny the Elder, a Roman historian, the temple was a "wonderful monument of Grecian magnificence, and one that merits our genuine admiration." The temple was built in the same marshy place as before. To prepare the ground, Piny recorded that "layers of trodden charcoal were placed beneath, with fleeces covered with wool upon the top of them."

The building is thought to be the first completely constructed with marble and one of its must unusual features were 36 columns whose lower portions were carved with figures in high-relief (above).

We do know that when Alexander the Great came to Ephesus in 333 B.C., the temple was still under construction. He offered to finance the completion of the temple if the city would credit him as the builder. The city fathers didn't want Alexander's name carved on the temple, but didn't want to tell him that. They finally gave the tactful response: "It is not fitting that one god should build a temple for another god" and Alexander didn't press the matter .

Piny reported that earthen ramps were employed to get the heavy stone beams perched on top of the columns. This method seemed to work well until one of the largest beams was put into position above the door. It went down crookedly and the architect could find no way to get it to lie flat. He was beside himself with worry about this until he had a dream one night in which the Goddess herself appeared to him saying that he should not be concerned. She herself had moved the stone in the proper position. The next morning the architect found that the dream was true. During the night the beam had settled into its proper place.

The city continued to prosper over the next few hundred years and was the destination for many pilgrims coming to view the temple. A souvenir business in miniature Artemis idols, perhaps similar to a statue of her in the temple, grew up around the shrine. It was one of these business proprietors, a man named Demetrius, that gave St. Paul a difficult time when he visited the city in 57 A.D.
St. Paul came to the city to win converts to the then new religion of Christianity. He was so successful that Demetrius feared the people would turn away from Artemis and he would lose his livelihood. He called others of his trade together with him and gave a rousing speech ending with "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" They then seized two of Paul's companions and a near riot followed. Eventually the city was quieted, the men released, and Paul left for Macedonia. It was Paul's Christianity that won out in the end, though.

By the time the great Temple of Artemis was destroyed during a raid by the Goths in 262 A.D., both the city and the religion of Artemis were in decline. When the Roman Emperor Constantine rebuilt much of Ephesus a century later, he declined to restore the temple. He had become a Christian and had little interest in pagan temples.

Despite Constantine's efforts, Ephesus declined in its importance as a crossroads of trade. The bay where ships docked disappeared as silt from the river filled it. In the end what was left of the city was miles from the sea, and many of the inhabitants left swampy lowland to live in the surrounding hills. Those that remained used the ruins of the temple as a source of building materials. Many of the fine sculptures were pounded into powder to make lime for wall plaster.

In 1863 the British Museum sent John Turtle Wood, an architect, to search for the temple. Wood met with many obstacles. The region was infested with bandits. Workers were hard to find. His budget was too small. Perhaps the biggest difficulty was that he had no idea where the temple was located. He searched for the temple for six years. Each year the British Museum threatened to cut off his funding unless he found something significant, and each year he convinced them to fund him for just one more season.

Wood kept returning to the site each year many despite hardships. During his first season he was thrown from a horse, breaking his collar bone. Two years later he was stabbed within an inch of his heart during an assassination attempt upon the British Consul in Smyrna.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

birth of Dolphin

A dolphin born in an aquarium in the Netherlands is to be named by the public.

As these amazing photos show his mother Finagain gave birth in her pool in the Harderwijk Dolfinarium on the 22nd May.

Finagain, a common bottlenose dolphin, was herself born in captivity to Notchfin and Guy in 1992.

Her pregnancy lasted twelve months, and the as-yet unnamed calf is around 3ft long at birth, already fully capable of swimming. Unlike human babies dolphin calves are born “breech”, i.e. tail first.

It will live with its mother until it is six. Male dolphins become sexually mature around age nine to thirteen.

The Dolfinarium is home to sixteen dolphins and six harbour porpoise. As well as hosting dolphin displays it acts as a rehabilitation centre, taking in beached or injured cetaceans and preparing them for life back in the wild.

It was first opened in 1965 by Frits den Herder and his brother Coen. During its chequered history the park went bankrupt after an ill-advised expansion into other European countries.

Only a state intervention by the Dutch government restored it to the not-for-profit animal rehabilitation centre it is today.