The idea that all the limitations we’ve come to believe are inhibitors of creative thinking could, in fact, be the liberators of it is, of course, extremely counterintuitive.
But that is exactly what they are. And once you discover that, once you learn how to use those limitations to your advantage instead of allowing them to muffle your creative potential, the possibilities are just enormous.
In the early 1990s, Chevy’s was one of the largest Mexican food restaurant chains in America. It prided itself on its “Fresh Mex” food, and when it turned to San Francisco agency, Goodby Berlin & Silverstein, to handle its advertising, Chevys had just one message it wanted to communicate:
Everything on Chevy’s menu is made fresh each and every day.
Steve Simpson and Tracy Wong were the creative team assigned to Chevys. The budget they had to work with wasn’t exactly in the same league as for, say, McDonald’s or General Motors, so any idea that depended on shooting for three weeks with an A-list director on some South Pacific island with Michael Jordan and a couple dozen Rockettes wasn’t in the cards.
The problem was clear. How could Chevy’s convince consumers that its food was made fresh every day and do that on a budget smaller than the contents of Budweiser’s petty cash drawer?
Armed with a simple video camera, Simpson and Wong got up every day at the crack of dawn, went out into the streets where they would ask real people if they were aware that Chevy’s made their food fresh every day, got some surprisingly funny answers, rushed back to the office, and edited the film so the finished spots could air that same night on TV.
Nobody had ever done that before.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” says Wong. “We were stuck with a budget that averaged $8,000 per spot. No director or production company would touch the project. We had to direct and produce them ourselves. The spots looked like crap because all we had were crappy gargantuan 15 lb. VHS cameras. But it served the concept. I also like to think we invented reality TV at the same time.
Talk about handcuffs.
”We slogged our way through and made each airdate. Restaurant sales went through the roof. The entire Bay Area was talking about the campaign. People started running up to us during filming”.
The Chevy’s campaign was truly groundbreaking, and it worked like gangbusters. The effect was, hey, if even the TV commercials are fresh, imagine what the food must taste like. Brilliant. And it might never have happened if Simpson and Wong hadn’t been forced to work inside, instead of outside, the box.
The annals of creativity are brimming with ingenious minds that found a way to do great work despite having all kinds of limitations imposed on them.
Todd Bol created the Little Free Library movement by building a small wooden box resembling a birdhouse, stocking it with books, and placing it in his front yard in Wisconsin. He encouraged neighbors to take a book or leave one, sparking a global phenomenon of tiny, community-based libraries. Bol's initial investment was minimal – just the cost of materials for the first library – but the idea spread virally, with thousands of Little Free Libraries now worldwide.
Banksy, the anonymous British street artist, is known for his politically charged and often satirical graffiti art. Despite working with limited resources and avoiding traditional art galleries, Banksy's works have gained international acclaim and sell for millions. His iconic stencil-based style allows him to create powerful statements using little more than spray paint and stencils, often on existing urban structures.
The Blair Witch Project was made on an extremely low budget (around $60,000) by filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. They used handheld cameras and improvised dialogue to create a found-footage style film about a group of students lost in the woods while investigating a local legend. The film's innovative marketing campaign, which included a website presenting the story as real, generated significant buzz and turned it into a box office success, grossing over $248 million worldwide.
When you’re working in a confined space whose walls are determined by an immovable set of boundaries, the more you can roll with it, the more likely it is that a big idea will reveal itself.
One of the best campaigns I ever did was shot on a hand-held camera in the parking lot of Yankee Stadium on Opening Day with no script and zero budget. Just one simple, smart idea that drove the whole production. I'm not exaggerating when I say we had no money either. We paid for our own meals and I slept on my brother's couch in Manhattan the night before the shoot. Totally worth it.
The other thing about having no budget is that there are a lot fewer people to screw up the idea. Don't underestimate that factor.
When Chevy's broke, someone remarked, "this is beyond advertising." And, it was—an absolutely thunder crack of an idea that makes the message its own living proof. They got some funny bits too, and I don't recall it looking all that horrible—they def didn't shoot the food—but, then again, baking reality into the reality was part of its strength.
Did Wong and Simpson really invent reality TV? Not sure, I'd go that far - live TV as a whole probably has that "hono," if you can want to call it that. Guy I once knew used to work on the old, old Cavett show and told me about the commercial break that featured the man pouring dog food into a bowl. Pooch comes out from the wings, gives it a sniff and promptly exits stage right. Cavett, not missing a beat, gets down on all fours, gives it his own sniff, and remarks to the audience, "don't see what his problem is...smells pretty good to me."