I love George Lois, but I would have been terrified to work for him

I absolutely love what he has to say about creativity. Which was the headline of an e-mail we sent our recently. (See below.)

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"Creativity can solve anything.The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."

- George Lois

Not everybody gets the business value of creativity in advertising.

Whatever form it takes, creativity is what will get people to linger a little longer on your web site, respond to your e-mails, listen to your radio spot, remember your print ad or television commercial, click your banner ad or even follow you on Facebook or Twitter.

Because the role of creativity in advertising is to not look and sound like everybody else. Advertising that looks and sounds like everybody else isn't going to demand very much attention. And if people aren't paying attention, they won't have a chance to learn about the benefits of your product or service.

When you get right down to it, our job as advertising people is to, you know, sell stuff. It is. That's the ultimate point of the entire exercise. If you're not trying to directly or indirectly generate sales of some sort, it's art, not advertising.

Those of us in the advertising business just get to do it through creativity.