Yonatan Dominic – Be flexible so you can change your perspective!

Festival of the Association of Advertising Agencies in Bulgaria FARA fathers in one place the best marketers and their advertising campaigns and invites inspiring professionals who share ideas, case studies, successful techniques and experience.

This year one of the lecturers on FARA Festival will be Yonatan Dominitz. He is the founder of Mindscapes, and trainer and a leader of creativity enhancement projects in advertising, media, marketing and communications. He is also an international speaker and has over 20 years of experience in the advertising industry. Here is a short interview presenting his ideas and work principles.

1. How did you decide to start doing what you do today – helping creative agencies be even more creative?

By coincidence, like many things in life. I was working many years in advertising, but I decided to change my life completely, so I quitted my job. But after a long while, a friend introduced me to a person who was looking for someone with advertising background to work with him on trainings for companies in the field of application for methodology in advertising. 11 years ago, I started my own company – http://www.themindscapes.com. Now what really inspires me is to inspire people, we have trained thousands of people over 4 continents.

2. In your opinion – does creativity need rest or stress?

A good combination of both. Because if the level of stress is too high your ability to innovate would decrease. On the other hand, when you are so relaxed and nothing bothers you, you can not create. Creativity is to do something which is really unexpected.

3. According to you, at its minimum, how much time and people are needed for a good brainstorming session on a new campaign?

I don’t have an answer. It really depends on so many variables. First is the complexity of the brief and how the brief is well or ill-defined. Second, it depends on how much insights you have, insights are so crucial, without insights you are stuck. Sometimes the majority of the work is to clarify and better define the brief and the task, and this takes like 90% of the time so once you have done that, creative ideas come easy.

4. What is the best way to evaluate and pick only one idea from a brainstorming session?

I would rather tell you what is the criteria to evaluate an idea. First, the creative idea has to motivate people to look at it and engage with it. Secondly, make sure it is really motivating enough for the media to cover. And thirdly, make sure that ultimately when people hear or see the idea, the brand idea is clear to them.

5. What really makes the difference between a regular and an award winning agency?

A lot of things, really – talent, determination, persistence, willing to fight and to never be satisfied. And of course you need luck, but luck is coming for those who create the conditions for luck to come, hoping and praying for luck is not enough. Also, it should be well understood that creativity is not just something that is nice for an agency to have, but a strong belief that creativity always drives business.

6. In your work – what is the most common problem or pattern that blocks agencies’ creativity?

I am not sure if there is only one, but the one that comes to my mind is something I call “Internalizing the thinking of the client”. In many cases, the client is afraid of creative idea because creative idea is risky, it is hard to sell a creative idea, the perceived risk is high too. And because in advertising, you need a client, what happens again and again is that you internalize the way the client thinks. So you limit the ideas from the very beginning and you narrow the scope of where the good creative ideas could come.

7. If there is one sentence or one short technique you want us to remember when we want to boost our creativity, what is it?

Flexibility to change perspectives and never to be satisfied by looking at a problem from only one perspective. So when you feel you are stuck, always ask yourself – which is the perspective that keeps me stuck and how can I unstuck myself?

Every year FARA reward the best from Bulgarian advertising business and invites the most inspiring lecturers worldwide. Yonathan Dominitz is one of them. Visit Fara and become part of the art of advertising.
Learn more for the festival here.
Tickets for FARA 2017 can be found here.