I take a ‘what’s the worst that could happen’ attitude and sat down to create one.

I actually got into collaging and using visuals for serious topics when I was studying for the MSc and used a book called ‘The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real’ by Lisa Sonora Beam to write a visual business plan. In it she uses a mandala or flower-shaped template to visualise and balance four essential business pathways to find your unique sweet spot. Definitely worth a read/do.

Back to vision boarding, not in a ‘manifest your dream life’ way. In a clear-your-head, roll your sleeves up and tap into your unconscious mind as well as your logical one kind of way.

So, I sat down on Friday having spent a small fortune on magazines and stim for the board, and 2 hours later I hadn’t pritt-sticked a single thing down.

Why? Because I was working through a series of questions that I’d gathered from various places and I was absorbed in exploring them more. So I’m sharing some of the most useful questions to ask as this new year unfolds, whether you get around to your vision board or not.

• What would a ‘boringly successful’ 2026 look like? The ‘stop seeking the next big thing’ question – this one was really poky and interesting to me. I’m constantly coming up with and sometimes trying to implement by new ideas, courses and content. But what if I could rely on what I already have (like 80,000 words of my book, online courses or the million other tabs I have open?)
• The (creative) ambition question. When you look back on 2026 what will have been your ‘great work’? Not the busy work, or the meh work but the hell yes I did that kind of work? I’ve used this question several times including to launch the Now Go Create podcast and my e-learning to propel me forward out of the weeds.
• Think about your creative nirvana for the next 6–12 months – what do you want to be making, leading, changing, or pushing?
• I’ve had this question living in my head rent free for a while. What do you regret not doing in 2025? What will you regret NOT doing in 2026? Not just outcomes but how you want to feel. This one really swirled around in my head and made me think about professional regrets spanning over around 5 years. If it keeps coming up then my unconscious mind is definitely trying to tell me something.
• What’s your big hairy ambitious goal (BHAG) for 2026? We set ambitious goals for our businesses, our brands, our clients. What’s your personal BHAG? Something that inspires, stretches and scares you a little bit in equal measure.

If you do want to create a vision board, some easy and obvious instructions.

Grab:

• A big piece of stiff board (A3 or larger if you can)
• Magazines, postcards, screenshots, photos
• Scissors and glue (3M spray mount if you were an AE in the 90’s IYKYK or are feeling fancy)
• Cut out anything that resonates – images, textures, phrases, words – without overthinking it too much. Let pattern and instinct lead.
• I like a fancy candle and bit of mood music too. Whatever floats your boat.

There is science behind vision boarding. It works because it takes you beyond purely rational planning and into visual sense-making. But here’s the important and blindingly obvious caveat: a vision board won’t do the work for you. But it will keep your goals visible, and visibility changes behaviour.

It’s a hands-on, creative thing to do with your team or group and can be a great way to get you all focussed on the same thing.

I hope that 2026 brings you everything you dream of professionally and personally. If I can help you bring your creative plans to life individually or for your organisation with strategy, creative and pitch training then give me a shout claire@nowgocreate.co.uk

Like much of the nation, I’ve become slightly obsessed with The Traitors. It’s gripping TV – tense, dramatic, and often infuriating.

But beyond the entertainment, the Round Table, the central place where decision making takes place has started to feel uncomfortably familiar.

Because if you strip away the cloaks and candlelight, what you’re really watching is a bad meeting.

Or more specifically: a bad brainstorm.

The Round Table: genius TV, terrible thinking

From a format perspective, the Round Table is brilliant. From a thinking perspective, it’s a car crash.

What gets banished isn’t just players – it’s original ideas, nuance and critical thinking.

If you’ve ever sat in a meeting where:
– one confident voice set the direction
– silence was mistaken for agreement
– challenging the group felt risky
– decisions happened fast but didn’t feel right

…then you’ve already been at the Round Table.

Why brainstorms fail: the psychology of groupthink

What’s playing out in The Traitors is a textbook example of groupthink.

Groupthink happens when a group values agreement or harmony more than critical thinking. The result is that decisions are made quickly, confidently – and often badly.

Every ingredient for groupthink is baked into the Round Table, and into many workplace meetings too:

– high stakes
– time pressure
– incomplete information
– strong personalities
– social consequences for dissent

Sound familiar?

“The loudest idea wins”

At the Round Table, the first confident accusation often sets the tone.

Once a name is floated:
– people start looking for evidence to support it
– contradictory information is ignored
– silence is interpreted as guilt
– disagreement feels dangerous

The same thing happens in badly run brainstorms.

When the most senior or confident person speaks first:
– the group converges too early
– alternative ideas never surface
– quieter thinkers opt out
– confidence is mistaken for clarity

Creativity doesn’t die with a bang. It quietly exits through the fire door.

What’s missing from many brainstorms: managed divergence and convergence

Good creative thinking follows a natural rhythm:

Diverge → explore → converge

That means generating multiple possibilities, holding ideas lightly, resisting early judgement, and only then deciding.

The Round Table skips straight to judgement.

Rarely is anyone asking:
– what else could be true?
– what are three alternative explanations?
– if this theory is wrong, what might we be missing?

Instead, certainty arrives early and crowds everything else out.

Silence doesn’t mean agreement

One of the most damaging myths in meetings is that silence equals buy-in.

In reality, silence can mean:
– someone needs time to think
– someone doesn’t feel safe disagreeing
– someone has been drowned out before
– someone has learned it’s career-limiting to speak up

Earlier in my career, I was often the “go with the flow” person because it felt safer. I’ve also experienced how being the dissenting voice can be emotionally – and professionally – punishing in the wrong environment.

I see the same dynamic now when I’m facilitating. Reputational risk outweighs idea quality, hierarchy rules, and groups default to the safest option.

Three ways to stop your brainstorm becoming a Round Table

If you want better ideas, you don’t need louder voices. You need better conditions.

1. Separate thinking from speaking

Give people time to think or write before anyone talks. This prevents the first idea from hijacking the room and surfaces stronger thinking from quieter contributors.

2. Protect disagreement early

Make it explicit that alternative views are welcome before consensus forms. Once alignment hardens, challenging it feels socially expensive.

3. Delay judgement on purpose

If you move straight to decisions, you’re not brainstorming – you’re voting. Build in a deliberate divergence phase where multiple ideas or explanations are actively encouraged.

Why this matters for creativity at work

Creativity isn’t about wild ideas or blue-sky thinking. It’s about creating the conditions where better thinking can happen.

When meetings reward speed, certainty and confidence over curiosity, diversity of thought collapses. Innovation slows, even in smart and experienced teams.

The irony is that the most dangerous decisions often feel the most unanimous.

Banishing “who shouts loudest” brainstorms

The Traitors works because it exposes how persuasive certainty can be, even when it’s wrong.

At work, we don’t get the dramatic reveal. We just live with the consequences.

If nothing else, it’s worth agreeing to banish brainstorms where hierarchy dominates, assumptions go unchallenged, speed is valued over insight, and the loudest idea always wins.

Good thinking needs openness, friction and time.

Not a Round Table.

Want help building better creative thinking at work?

I’m Claire Bridges, Founder of Now Go Create. I help individuals, teams and organisations develop their creative capabilities through training, workshops and consulting – especially in environments where groupthink, hierarchy and fear get in the way of good ideas.

At the start of every year, the same thing happens.

Trend reports are published. Predictions are shared. “2026 and beyond” decks start circulating. And with them comes a familiar mix of excitement and pressure – we should do something with this.

But in practice, the use of trends often stays at the level of inspiration and never turns into action.

Why trend reports rarely give you ideas directly

Trend reports are not always immediate idea generators. Their real value lies in what they reveal about your potential audience’s:

• changing behaviours
• unmet expectations
• cultural tensions
• emerging needs

In other words, they give you raw material – not finished concepts.

Ideas only emerge once you interrogate that material and apply it to your context: your audience, your brand, your constraints, your ambitions.

This is why two organisations can read the same trend report and produce wildly different outcomes, which is a good thing in my opinion.

Why this trend, why now?

Using trends from platforms like TrendWatching, I encourage teams towards asking underlying questions about the trend:

• Why is this trend emerging now?
• What’s changing beneath the surface?
• What tensions or frustrations are becoming more visible?
• Who benefits from this shift – and who might feel excluded?
• Which deeper human needs does this point to?

This stage often feels less exciting than jumping straight to ideas, but it’s where clarity is built. Without it, brainstorming becomes guesswork.

Use a canvas to scaffold your thinking

One of the most useful tools I return to again and again is the TrendWatching Consumer Trend Canvas.

Not because it magically produces ideas, but because it forces you to:

• separate drivers of change from short-term triggers
• distinguish surface behaviours from deeper needs
• think about who the trend really applies

Choosing trend sources

Not all trend resources serve the same purpose, which is why I tend to mix and match.

Some of my go-to sources include:

• TrendWatching – for global consumer shifts and applied innovation examples
• PSFK – for future-facing thinking across retail, tech and experience
• Mintel – for depth, data and category-specific insight
• McKinsey & Company – for macro, tech and industry-level analysis
• Trend Hunter – for breadth and cultural scanning
• WGSN – for long-range lifestyle and consumer forecasting
• Exploding Topics – for spotting fast-rising topics early
• Think with Google – for behavioural insight grounded in search data

Each offers something different. None of them replace thinking.

Turning trends into action (without forcing it)

Trends are not instructions. They’re invitations.

Used well, they help you:

• see beyond your immediate category
• challenge assumptions that have gone unquestioned
• explore what might matter next and why

If you want help using trends to brainstorm creative ideas in your sector get in touch claire@nowgocreate.co.uk

Something I’ve observed from working with thousands of people, and hundreds of teams is that a lot of the time teams don’t struggle because they lack ideas. They often struggle because the conditions for good thinking erode, or are never in place to start with.

Maybe:

• A lack of strategy or direction means that your team is a group of individuals following their own ‘North Star.’
• Poor facilitation skills mean that the loudest voices prevail in meetings or brainstorms without making room for introspection or reflection, leaving anyone who has a more internal process feeling underutilised and ignored.
• The team has no shared understanding of what great creative output looks like in your context meaning subjectivity rules the roost.
• Things are so fast-paced, that the lure of tried and tested beats original thinking every time but leaves you all with the feeling you know you could have done better.

Every team is different and what are barriers for your group will be different from others. So, I’ve put together a mini-audit for teams to identify what helps and what gets in the way of your team doing its best thinking together.

You can do this as:

• an individual reflection, then compare notes
• or a shared conversation in a meeting or workshop

Take it one section at a time.

1. What ‘good creative work’ actually looks like on this team

Start here.

• When has this team done work it was genuinely proud of?
• What made that work ‘good’ – what criteria are you using to define your creative output?
• What behaviours were present?
• What was noticeably absent?
• Can you identify any other factors that make the difference to the team’s creative output?

2. Speaking up

Ask yourself (ves) honestly:

• Can people suggest barely or half-formed ideas without apologising or feeling judged?
• Is disagreement treated as useful or uncomfortable?
• Do quieter voices tend to disappear?
• Do the people running team stand ups or brainstorms understand facilitation methods?

Teams need permission to think out loud without worrying about the consequences. It’t not about ‘there are no wrong or rubbish ideas’ – there will be loads. It just that we’ll treat them as initial ‘material’ not an assessment of the person’s entire personality or abilities.

3. How ideas move through the team

Map the real flow, not the ideal one.

• Where and how do ideas start?
• Where and how do they get shaped and developed?
• Where do they get stuck, watered down, or killed?
• Is it genuinely a team effort or is it the same people and the same places?
• Do you play to the team’s different strengths and preferences? Do you even know what they are? See the next section.

If ideas routinely die in the same place, that’s potentially a system issue not an ideas problem.

4. Strengths in the room

Every team has different thinking strengths, whether they name them, or share them, or not.

• Who seeks clarity?
• Who spots gaps or risks? 
• Who pushes for originality?
• Who keeps things moving?
• Who dissents?
• Who brings insights?
• Who loves the wider picture?
• Who digs detail

If the same people are always expected to ‘be creative’ in the same way, you’re underusing the room.

5. The shadow side of those strengths

This is where teams get interesting.

• When does clarity become over-simplification?
• When does originality tip into impracticality?
• When does efficiency override time to think?
• When does the desire for group harmony suppress unconventional thought?

Creative friction is healthy.
Unexamined friction is a wasted opportunity.

6. Decision-making and ownership

Creative teams stall when decisions are fuzzy.

• Who decides what moves forward?
• How often are decisions reopened without explanation?

Creativity suffers when effort doesn’t feel proportionate to influence.

7. Energy and pace

Look beyond output.

• When does the team feel most alive?
• When does energy consistently dip?
• Are you asking for creative thinking when people are already drained?

Every day creativity beats heroic bursts every time.

8. Language and habits

Notice the phrases that shape behaviour:

• “We don’t have time”
• “Let’s be realistic”
• “That won’t fly”
• “We tried that before”

Language creates invisible rules.
Once you hear them, you can choose which ones to keep.

9. Rituals (or lack of them)

Every team has rituals even accidental ones.

• How do you start projects?
• How do you review work?
• How do you close things down?
• How do you acknowledge progress or learning?
• How do you celebrate your creative achievements?

10. One thing to change

Don’t try to fix everything.

As a team, agree on:

• one condition to improve
• one habit to test
• or one ritual to introduce

Make it small. Make it visible. Review it and review it again.

If you want help developing your team’s creative capabilities get in touch with me claire@nowgocreate.co.uk

My recent Now Go Create podcast guest, Daisy Amodio, heard exactly that – and went ahead anyway.

Daisy is the founder of The Proposers and one of the world’s leading proposal planners. She’s staged more than 5,000 marriage proposals across the globe, from £500 pop-ups to a £1 million, multi-country epic that ended with faces projected on to Niagara falls. She’s done fake drug arrests, dressed 50 cats as waiters, and now masterminds ultra-luxury weddings – including a royal one.

In this blog, I’m pulling out the creative and entrepreneurial lessons from our conversation: how Daisy invented a category, how she mines clients for stories, and what it really takes to say “yes” first and figure it out later.

From ad agency to “queen of proposals”

Daisy’s story starts in a familiar place for lots of us – the creative industries. She was an account manager at M&C Saatchi, loved her job, and had no plans to leave. Then her brother asked for help.

He wanted to propose, had no idea how, and – in his words – “no creative bone in his body”. Daisy designed a treasure hunt around london, ending at sunset with a harpist and a big yes.

Afterwards, she did what many of us would do: she googled “proposal planner”.

Nothing. No category. No competitors. No obvious proof that anyone wanted what she’d just done.

Instead of parking it as a nice one-off, she followed a gut feeling that something was there – weddings were getting bigger, social media was exploding, and big, shareable moments were becoming the norm.

So she did some “research”: a questionnaire to 500 men.

The verdict?

• most thought it was a terrible idea
• “why spend money on proposing? just get down on one knee”
• “why would you leave a good job for that?”

Even her (very supportive) boyfriend reminded her she still had to pay the bills.

The exception? Her agency. They loved the idea, gave her space on stage to share it with the whole company, and even lent her web designers to get her first site off the ground.

Fast-forward 13–14 years and that “rubbish idea” has turned into:

• 5,000 proposals
• two tv series (including Will You Marry Me? on channel 4)
• a wedding planning business and a royal wedding

If you’ve ever had an idea shot down, Daisy is proof that external validation is not the only signal you should listen to.

Inventing (and then defending) a category

Because she was first to market, Daisy’s initial “strategy” was deceptively simple:

• get a website up
• talk about “proposal planning” clearly and consistently
• benefit from the fact there was zero competition in search

She ranked page one on google for proposal planner because literally nobody else was using the term.

Of course, success attracts competition. Today:

• there are proposal planners in almost every country
• hotels and attractions run their own proposal packages
• there’s a steady stream of copycats

Her answer? Double down on expertise and niche.

“there is nobody in the world more of an expert than me at proposals. it would be physically impossible.”

She’s done more proposals than anyone else, across more cultures, budgets and styles. And she’s built a natural funnel: if someone has a decent budget for the proposal, she can transition them into her wedding business afterwards.

The creative engine: deep client discovery + Pinterest stalking

As romantic as it all sounds, Daisy’s process is grounded and quite systematic.

When she’s pitching or planning, she wants to know:

• how the couple met
• what they love about each other
• favourite colours, foods, music
• in-jokes, nicknames, shared obsessions
• visual clues – Pinterest boards, instagram feeds, playlists

A favourite example is her first ever paying client:

• the girlfriend was an aspiring artist with a pinterest board full of handmade hearts
• Daisy invited her to what looked like an art gallery show in Richmond
• 10 canvases lined the walls – each a new “artwork”, actually about their relationship
• the final piece was wrapped in her favourite purple velvet
• underneath was her own heart artwork from pinterest, re-created to say “will you marry me?”

They later used the pieces at their wedding and still send Daisy family photos.

The whole experience is built on story mining: turning private details into public moments.

Fake arrests, cat waiters and a million-pound waterfalls

Part of what makes Daisy’s work so compelling – and so good for TV – is how wildly different each brief can be.

A few that stood out:

• Fake drug arrest in barcelona
  • she and her team slipped “drugs” (oregano!) into the girlfriend’s pocket
  • fake police “arrested” her, bundled her into a car, and told her she’d never go back to america
  • she had to identify her supposed dealer in a line-up
  • instead, her boyfriend stepped forward, dropped to one knee and proposed
  • she loved it – because pranks were central to their relationship
• The cat-themed proposal
  • 50 actual cats dressed as mini waiters
  • the couple stroked them, had cake, discovered the ring, then danced to a jazz song about cats
  • deeply niche, totally on-brand for them
• The £1 million “no budget” brief
  • his original ask: project his face onto the Eiffel Tower
  • daisy said yes… then discovered every authority in france would say no
  • she came back with alternatives and ended up:
    • hiring out disneyland paris privately, with fireworks and personalised characters
    • taking the couple around the world, staging iconic moments on each continent
    • culminating at Niagara Falls at night, with both of their faces projected on to the water

Her attitude is “say yes first, work out the how later” – and then quietly deal with the logistics, regulations and politics behind the scenes.

Storytelling as the spine of the experience

We talk about “storytelling” endlessly in business, but daisy lives it in a very literal way.

For her, storytelling means:

• narrative from first contact to final yes – the enquiry email, the pitch deck, the build-up, the reveal, the photos afterwards
• physical storytelling in the space – props, colours, textures and music that all link back to the couple’s story
• continuity into the wedding – reusing proposal elements in the wedding decor, stationery or rituals

No two proposals or weddings are the same because no two stories are the same. The “big gesture” makes the headlines, but it’s the small, specific details that make people feel truly seen.

6 takeaways from Daisy’s story

You might not be projecting faces onto waterfalls any time soon, but there’s a lot we can steal from Daisy’s approach.

Here are six prompts to take into your own work:

1. Trust your gut, not the poll
   If 500 people tell you your idea is rubbish, they might be right – or you might be early. Check the logic, then listen to your instincts. Not every idea needs a focus group’s blessing.
2. Mine your clients’ world for specific details
   Don’t stop at the brief. Look at pinterest boards, playlists, social feeds, old photos. The gold for storytelling and creativity is often already there – you just have to go looking.
3. Offer both templates and true bespoke
   Packages give reassurance, speed and scale. Bespoke work feeds your creative soul and your portfolio. You don’t have to choose; you can design your business to hold both.
4. Say yes, then design the constraints
   You don’t have to know exactly how you’ll do something the moment you say yes. But you do need to quickly create the boundaries, resources and plan that make it possible.
5. Build a team before you break yourself
   If you’re still “sticking 5,000 crystals on by hand” in your business, ask where you can start handing things over. Your future work (and health) will thank you.
6. Remember: if there’s no playbook, you can write one
   There was no rulebook for proposal planning. Daisy wrote her own.

Listen to the full episode here.Now Go Create Podcast

And if this sparked something for you – an idea you’ve parked, a niche you’re too scared to own – maybe this is your nudge to dust it off and explore it again.

The word strategy has the power to intimidate. It gets wrapped up in war metaphors, chess analogies and books like The Art of War. People get promoted into “strategic roles” with no training, and are then quietly expected to just… know how to do it.

That was true for me, and it was true for my guest on the Now Go Create podcast, Julian Cole.

Julian is a strategy consultant who’s worked with brands like Uber, Apple, Facebook and Disney, and runs the brilliant Strategy Finishing School. In our wide ranging and illuminating conversation we talked about:

• What strategy actually is (without the jargon)
• Why insights need to be emotional, not just clever data points
• How to use AI as a strategic sparring partner
• The soft skills and office politics no one talks about – but everyone needs
• Practical ways to build your own strategic confidence

This blog pulls out the key ideas for anyone who wants to get better at strategic thinking in their creative or communications work.

So… what is strategy, really?

Let’s start by stripping it back.

Julian’s definition:

Strategy is a plan that uses limited resources to get you to your goal.

Inside that, there are four core pieces:

1. Goal – where do we want to get to?
2. Problem – what’s in the way of that goal?
3. Insight – a revelatory truth that makes us see the problem differently
4. Solution – how we’ll get around the problem

If the way forward is already obvious – for example, “we just need to build this app” – then you don’t really need a strategy. You just need to do the thing.

Strategy becomes useful when:

• things are confusing or complex
• more people are involved
• nobody is quite sure why you’re doing what you’re doing

That’s when you need a clear, shared story: here’s the goal, here’s the real problem, here’s the insight and here’s the plan.

A much quoted example (with great reason)

To make this more concrete, Julian used the classic Snickers campaign example.

• goal (consumer) – young guys want to feel part of the group
• problem – when they’re hungry, they act out and push their friends away
• insight – “you’re not yourself when you’re hungry” – that moment of being hangry is the real issue
• solution – eat a snickers, the most filling chocolate bar, and you go back to being “you”

Once you see it through that lens, the whole campaign clicks into place. PS I know that getting to this is a lot easier in hindsight but it’s a text book example.

Why insights aren’t just data points

The word “insight” gets thrown around a lot. Most of us (me included) have probably slapped “insight” above a line that’s really just a fact.

Julian’s definition is more demanding:

an insight is a revelatory truth that makes you look at the problem in a new way.

How do you know when you’ve got one?

• if people just nod – it’s probably a truth or a stat
• if people raise their eyebrows, laugh, or say “oh wow, I’d never thought of it like that” – you’re closer to a real insight

It should land emotionally first, and then you can back it up rationally with data.

He gave a lovely example from a project on robot vacuums. His junior strategist had gone through Amazon reviews and found a line that said:

“Roomba is like your drunk roommate trying to clean.”

Instant reaction: of course it is. It’s irrational, bumps into things, does its own chaotic route. That line has feeling and freshness – and therefore, potential as an insight.

Using AI as a strategic sparring partner

We also talked about something lots of us are experimenting with right now: using AI tools to help with strategy.

Julian’s line, which I love:

“AI is like salt in cooking – use it at the start and the end, never all the way through.”

In practice that means:

• use ai early to open up territories, dig up clichés, stereotypes and category truisms
• then you step in as the human in the loop – to judge, shape, validate and sense-check
• you might use ai again at the end to help polish, summarise or generate alternatives

A few prompts and angles he likes:

• “what are the clichés about this category / consumer / problem?”
• “flip each cliché and tell me what the opposite might be.”
• “what emotional contradictions sit inside this situation?”

But – and it’s a big but – the feeling of an insight still has to come from you. Ai will happily give you neat-sounding lines; only you can tell which ones actually shift how you see the problem.

Your next strategic step

If strategy has always felt like a mysterious dark art reserved for people with “director” in their title, I hope this conversation with Julian makes it feel:

• more human
• more emotional
• and much more learnable (spetoiler, this is something we teach at Now Go Create!)

Start small:

• frame your next piece of work as goal–problem–insight–solution
• notice which lines hit you in the gut, not just the head
• use AI sparingly as a curious collaborator, not the whole answer
• and pay attention to how ideas actually move through your organisation

You don’t need to wait to be “given” a strategic role. You can start thinking and working more strategically from where you are, with the briefs already on your desk. Get in touch to find out how we can help you to develop your critical thinking and strategic skills.

Listen to the full episode here to help sharpen up your critical thinking and strategy skills.

If you’re opening a blank document and feeling absolutely nothing – no spark, no pull, no excitement – this one’s for you.

Lately, I’ve been in a creative slump myself. A heavy, slowed-down, slightly foggy state where ideas don’t feel blocked exactly, just harder to reach. Work is intense, life is full, and my personal creative reserves feel low.

And if that sounds familiar, I remind myself that:

This is normal.
This is human.
And it will pass.

Let’s talk about what a creative slump really is – and what actually helps when you, or your team are, in one.

One of my early Now Go Create podcast guests, the singer-songwriter Dyo, once said something that completely reframed how I think about creative blocks:

“Creative blocks don’t actually exist – the moment you name it, you give it power.”

A block suggests a wall – something actively stopping you.
A slump, on the other hand, feels more like quicksand – slow, heavy, draining.

But what if neither of those labels is really helpful?

What if you’re not blocked at all – you’re just in a different creative mood or even a different creative season?

Sometimes what feels like being stuck is actually your creativity asking for:
– Rest
– Play
– A change of pace
– Space to wander
– Or simply… time

When we label the experience too harshly, we risk making it feel bigger and more permanent than it really is.

The reality of creativity (it’s not always Instagram-pretty)

We love to romanticise creativity – the post-it notes, the playlists, the perfect flow state.

But real creativity looks more like this:

– Staring at a screen full of doubt
– Feeling under pressure
– Working when you don’t feel inspired
– Getting something “good enough” over the line
– Questioning yourself the whole way through

Even as someone who teaches creativity for a living, I don’t get to flick a magic switch whenever I want. Creativity moves more like a tide – it flows, it ebbs, it returns.

The worst thing we can do? Panic when it feels like it’s gone out. It hasn’t. It always comes back.

The creative CAT Scan – a simple check-in when you feel flat

When I feel out of sorts creatively, I use something I call a Creative CAT Scan. It’s a fast way to understand what’s really going on under the surface and an idea I borrowed for the amazing Elizabeth Gilbert.

You can do this in five minutes with a notebook.

C – Curiosity

Ask yourself:
– Am I still asking questions?
– Am I noticing details?
– Is anything intriguing me right now?

For me, curiosity shows up in tiny moments – like noticing tube ads on my commute and wondering:
Why that image?
Why that headline?
What was the creative thinking behind it?

When curiosity drops off, it’s often a sign I’m overwhelmed rather than uninspired.

A – Action

Ask yourself:
– Am I taking any creative action at all – even tiny ones?

This could be:
– Doodling
– Rearranging your workspace
– Taking a new route to work
– Planting bulbs in your garden
– Trying something slightly unfamiliar

Action doesn’t need momentum to start. Action creates momentum.

One brilliant tip from creative strategist Emma Mayo:

“Commit to just 10 minutes. Half of that might just be setting things up – and that’s fine. Once you start, you often keep going.”

T – Tenacity

Ask yourself:
– Am I showing myself compassion – or criticism?
– Am I pushing relentlessly instead of listening?

Coach Remy Bloomfield shared this:

“Creative slumps aren’t the enemy. They’re often a signal that something new is about to emerge – if we stop forcing it.”

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is step back.

Here’s the coaching question I’ve been sitting with during my own slump:

“What do I want to do – purely for fun?”

No output.
No productivity.
No shoulds.
No strategy.

Just joy.

This is where Julia Cameron’s idea of the Artist Date comes in – a solo, pre-planned experience purely to feed your curiosity and creative spirit. Not for content. Not for progress. Just for aliveness.

Mine right now? I’m genuinely tempted by a flotation tank. No goal. Just curiosity.

Wherever you’re at, remember to be kind to yourself and remember you sometimes have to retreat to move ahead.

The Situationists were a group of radical artists, writers, and intellectuals active mainly in the 1950s and 60s who believed that modern life had become a kind of performance – a “spectacle” – that disconnected people from authentic experiences.

Think of it this way: they looked around at post-war society and saw people going through the motions of living rather than actually living. Shopping, working, consuming media – it all felt scripted and fake to them. They called this the

“society of the spectacle.”

The group was led by a French theorist named Guy Debord, and they were particularly active in Paris. They weren’t just complaining about modern life though – they wanted to actively disrupt it and create moments of genuine experience.

This is where the dérive came in. By wandering aimlessly through cities, they were essentially rebelling against the efficient, purposeful way we’re supposed to move through urban spaces. Instead of rushing from home to work to shop to home, they’d drift and see what happened.

They also created “situations” – planned disruptions designed to shake people out of their routine consciousness. These could be anything from rearranging furniture in public spaces to creating alternative maps of cities that showed emotional rather than geographical relationships between places.

The Situationists heavily influenced the 1968 Paris student protests and continue to influence artists, activists, and urban planners today. Their core idea – that we should actively create authentic experiences rather than passively consume pre-packaged ones – feels surprisingly relevant in our age of social media and endless content consumption.

Essentially, they were saying: “Wake up! Stop sleepwalking through life and start creating it.”

I discovered the idea of a derive during my masters programme over a decade ago, and it completely shifted how I think about creativity and innovation. Instead of walking from A to B with blinkers on, you become hyper-aware of your surroundings, noticing connections you’d normally miss.

The magic happens when you connect the seemingly unconnected. A traffic light with a church in the background becomes a metaphor for leadership. Graffiti sparks thoughts about permanence versus transience. Street signs reveal our relationship with authority.

As someone who’s spent 30 years in the creative industries, I can tell you that some of my best ideas have come from exactly this kind of unplanned wandering. When you stop trying to force insights, they start finding you.

Summer holidays coming up? Perfect time to drift a little. Listen to the short episode here

Download this week’s worksheet here.

This ‘nudge’ is part of my Creative Summer School, a free, six-week email series dropping into your in-box each week

• Get a simple creative tool or tip from me

• A partner podcast episode to help you go deeper and learn on the move

• A practical worksheet or prompt to instantly apply the nudge to real work or life projects

• An optional “buddy system” to check in and share learnings boosting accountability and connection

• A short, snappy WhatsApp-style audio note from Claire with bonus stories and inspiration

• All the resources and worksheets are yours to download for your own use or for running creative sessions with your team.
• Sign up here https://mailchi.mp/nowgocreate.co.uk/creative-nudge

Well… what if you switched on your creativity too?

Introducing the Creative Nudge Summer School

I’ve created a completely free six-week summer school to help you build tiny creative habits that fit into your life, not your to-do list.

Here’s why: creativity isn’t about having loads of spare time or being “naturally talented.” It’s about noticing, reframing, and borrowing ideas from the world around you – in ways that take minutes, not hours.

What you’ll get:

• One short email each week packed with easy nudges to spark fresh thinking.
• One 4 minute mini-podcast episode designed for beach walks, coffee breaks, or even waiting in holiday traffic.
• Tiny creative habits that build confidence and inspire new ideas, without adding any pressure to your summer.

What will we explore?

• How to build creative confidence in ridiculously small ways
• Why your best ideas come in the shower (and how to harness that)
• How a simple walk around your neighbourhood can unlock your next big solution
• The art of borrowing brilliance from completely unrelated worlds
• How to reframe problems like a photographer changes angles
• And why resting is the most productive thing you can do for creativity

Who is it for?

If you’re thinking:

“I’m not the creative type.”
Perfect – this is exactly for you.

“I don’t have time for this.”
Even better – we’re talking about habits that fit into the tiniest gaps in your day.

“I’ll probably forget to do it.”
That’s why I’ll be your gentle weekly reminder, dropping into your inbox with a nudge

Ready to join us?

The first nudge lands on the 16th July. You can sign up at any time over the summer.

Sign up here for free!

Share the love

Know someone who could use a creativity boost right now? Share this post with them or include your team or colleagues in the exercises each week.

Why does this matter?

Many of us work on briefs that feel uninspiring, dry, or weighed down by constraints. This episode proves that creativity doesn’t depend on having a “cool” brand or unlimited budgets. Instead, the world’s best ideas often come from flipping assumptions, understanding cultural truths, and reframing products or problems in unexpected ways.

Here are some of the key campaigns we discussed – and what they teach us about creativity.

1. The world’s unlikeliest tourism campaign

Campaign: The Best Place in the World to Have Herpes
Organisation: New Zealand Herpes Foundation

This campaign reframed herpes from taboo into national pride by combining humour with cultural insight. Using Kiwi sporting icons, it created a spoof-style destigmatisation course with a leaderboard, encouraging people to engage, learn, and reduce stigma.

Arif noted how the team probably asked themselves:

“What’s the wrong way to do a herpes campaign? Then, what’s the opposite of that?”

This campaign shows how flipping assumptions can break creative deadlocks, especially when combined with bravery and authentic cultural relevance.

2. Turning tickets into opportunities

Campaign: Lucky Yatra
Organisation: Indian Railways

In India, fare dodging is common due to limited gates and checks. The insight behind Lucky Yatra was simple but powerful: while many people avoid buying train tickets, they spend willingly on lottery tickets.

So Indian Railways transformed train tickets into lottery tickets by adding a simple code. This reframed ticket buying from a burden into an opportunity, leading to a 34% increase in sales. It shows how creative problem solving doesn’t always require changing a product – sometimes it just needs a new lens.

Claire reflected on this as an example of related worlds thinking – connecting seemingly unrelated categories (rail travel and lotteries) to spark a solution.

3. Burger King’s cheeky gaming hack

Campaign: Burger to King
Brand: Burger King

Burger King used FIFA gaming to reinforce its underdog, playful brand personality. They noticed that two real FIFA players were called ‘Burger’ and ‘King’. Players who recruited both and completed plays triggering the commentator to say “Burger King” were rewarded with Whoppers.

This idea:

• Reinforced brand consistency while feeling fresh
• Used cultural relevance (gaming) and cheeky humour
• Out-thought competitors like McDonald’s with earned media rather than outspending them

Arif described Burger King’s long-term success as:

“The secret of brand management is to be new and old at the same time.”

4. AXA’s three words that changed lives

Campaign: And Domestic Violence
Brand: AXA Insurance

Domestic violence victims often stay because they cannot afford to leave. AXA added three words – “and domestic violence” – to their mandatory home insurance clauses in France, enabling victims to claim support and find safety. This affected over 2.5 million policies.

Claire highlighted how this moved beyond CSR into genuine product innovation with purpose baked in, proving that creativity isn’t just ads or stunts – it can be how you design your services to solve real problems.

5. Rocket’s unifying Super Bowl moment

Campaign: Own the Dream
Brand: Rocket (mortgages and financial products, USA)

Rocket united diverse Americans during the Super Bowl with a brand film featuring John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’. Arif discussed how emotion and music can create a sense of national unity, while Claire noted how it activated audiences to sing along, making them participants rather than passive viewers.

Practical takeaways from this episode

1. Flip assumptions – ask yourself “What’s the wrong approach here?” then reverse it.
2. Reframe products and problems – train tickets as lottery tickets, insurance as a route to safety (check out the podcast episode on related worlds)
3. Root ideas in cultural truth – humour for herpes only worked because it felt authentically Kiwi.
4. Balance consistency with freshness – like Burger King does by staying cheeky while finding new executions.
5. Use creativity to design services – not just campaigns. Creativity can drive business innovation with purpose.

Creativity thrives when we challenge norms, see constraints as springboards rather than blockers, and immerse ourselves in unexpected worlds. Whether it’s herpes, insurance, or fare dodging, brilliant creative thinking can turn any brief into something talkable, effective, and culturally powerful.

If you want to hear the full conversation and get practical tools for your own work, listen to episode 25 – Herpes, Home Insurance, and Fare Dodging: Creativity That Earns Its Keep here

Want your own Cannes Decoded?

Want to understand what really makes award-winning creativity tick – and how to apply it to your briefs or challenges?

Arif Haq and I are offering Cannes Decoded: a bespoke 90-minute session for your team. We’ll unpack this year’s most powerful campaigns, reveal the creative thinking behind them, and share practical tools to unlock braver, smarter ideas in your work.

If you’d like to:

• Get behind the scenes of Cannes Lions-winning ideas
• Inspire your team with fresh approaches and frameworks
• Learn how to flip assumptions and create talkable, effective campaigns

Then get in touch to book your Cannes Decoded session today.

Email claire@nowgocreate.co.uk to find out more and tailor it for your team’s challenges.