Collaboration, spaghetti & marshmallows – all in a day’s work!

Today we ran a workshop as part of Marketing Week’s Creative Programmatic conference. For the uninitiated this event is all about how algorithms are taking over the world of ad-buys and how creativity is required to overcome some of the challenges and opportunities this throws up. We were asked to run 2 short workshops and decided to throw something completely seemingly unrelated into the mix – something called the Marshmallow Challenge. You can see the TED talk below about how the idea originated by a guy called Tom Wujec who’s interested in design and collaboration. The marshmallow challenge is a simple team-building exercise  involving spaghetti, tape and yep – a giant marshmallow. The challenge is who can build the tallest tower with the ingredients?

We figured that with an intense schedule which involved a lot of listening and sitting down for the delegates that they’d enjoy getting hands-on and actively creative. The challenge went down brilliantly as you can see, with delegates really getting into building their towers and competing with each other.

Tom Wujec says:  “Design truly is a contact sport. It demands that we bring all of our senses to the task, and that we apply the very best of our thinking, our feeling and our doing to the challenge that we have at hand. And sometimes, a little prototype of this experience is all that it takes to turn us from an “uh-oh” moment to a “ta-da” moment. And that can make a big difference.”

Our workshop participants loved it. If you’re looking to do something different at your conference, event or workshop please get in touch with lucy@nowgocreate.co.uk