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Reproductive thinking Vs productive thinking

Nov 18, 2020

Glenn Robinson, Head of Creative

I was amazed after coming back from a client meeting once, not so long ago.

“Wow! That was a great meeting,” said my colleague.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“They just loved the proposal,” she replied.

I raised an eyebrow. What?! I had the polar opposite opinion about the meeting we’d just left. To me, the meeting wasn’t a success at all.

My boss at the time told me that some people just aren’t wired to read the room, or people, for that matter. The idea that we are all wired differently freaked me out a little.

“When the average person is asked to find the needle in a haystack, he or she will stop once they find a needle. I, on the other hand, will go through the entire haystack looking for all the possible needles.”

- Albert Einstein.

So I started doing some research into creative thinking and strategy in the hope of better understanding myself, and why, as a creative, I think the way I do. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t automatically programmed to fail in my job.

The key difference between producing and reproducing

The idea of reproductive thinking and productive thinking came across my screen a few weeks later when I read an article on the topic, which compelled me to then dig a little deeper.

Reproductive thinking can be thought of as inherited thinking. It can be dangerous in an agency environment where you’re constantly being asked to increase the pace of your work and become more efficient with your output.

When this happens, creatives can be forgiven for shutting off the part of their brain that is used for productive thinking and simply reverting to reproductive thinking. It’s our natural human instinct to revert to the path of least resistance when the pressure is on.

Perhaps it’s because creatives believe that their colleague who wrote the brief understands the client better than they do. Or perhaps it’s because they’re carrying scar tissue from being told one too many times that their work is “off brief” and to in future, “please just stick to the brief”.

So, you cut out that hour of creative thinking that you were going to invest into the job, and instead you take as gospel that inherited information you were handed. You use it to produce some fantastic looking output that could be featured in an art gallery…but unfortunately it will never contribute to solving the business problems for the client.

“Telephone did not come into existence from the persistent improvement of the postcard.”

- Amit Kalantri.

Client Services can be forgiven for thinking, “hey, this is the creative’s job. I tell them the problem and they give me back the gold. It’s not my job to care about the output!”.

Who owns creative thinking and strategy?

So, where does the responsibility lie then for the creative thinking? Let’s call it ‘strategy’. If strategy is only done upfront and then falls into a ‘set and forget’ pattern, then creatives (everyone in Business Services, really) and Client Services inherits it. This reduces us to mere reproductive thinkers. The path has been set – and don’t you dare veer off it. This is what we’ve decided, this is what the client has signed off on, so this is exactly what we’re going to do.

When we become so reproductive in our thinking that we fail to question the set strategy, then over time we are simply setting ourselves up for failure. We close ourselves off to the litany of other great options that may be uncovered through a healthy dose of creative productive thinking. Instead, we become mere ‘brief takers’.

The problem with reproductive thinking is it’s confined and only draws on what John Cleese calls the, “closed mind”. It’s playing it safe. It sits in a comfortable, neat little box that we know has worked before. It doesn't ask the critical question of, “what if?”. To think outside the box, our thinking can’t be confined to the box. Doing what you’ve always done will only get what you’ve always gotten

It’s important to note here that challenging the strategy after it has already been set does not amount to doubling up of work. It’s simply about uncovering new possibilities.

Embrace the power of productive thinking

So, what is productive thinking then? Productive thinking is solving a problem with insight. Insight enables us to peek behind the curtain. If your insight tells you that your target audience loves the colour blue, would you base your design on the colour yellow? What if your client’s existing branding focused on yellow and not blue? With the insight you have gained through productive thinking, you can confidently present the case that the client should use less yellow and more blue.

The responsibility for insight and creative thinking sits with all of us. In order to help each other and deliver great work for clients, we all need to be asking the right questions. Compiling the brief needs to be a collaborative effort. Let’s not be so presumptive as to think that any one individual has all the answers.

To start, when looking at your target audience, ask questions like:

How does my offering make their lives easier?
What problem can I solve for them?
What are they reading during the day that I might come alongside with my own content that will add value for them?
What is the historical ad data telling us about their on-site activity?
What are craving to see more of?

Good luck!

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