It’s surprising when you introduce a feature on a blog and then forget about it yourself. Looking back for some content on the Brainzooming blog this weekend, I came upon the “Pictures (of Creativity) Are Worth a 1,000 Words” posts from Fall 2011 and realized the structure was great to feature these pictures of downtown creativity.
Downtown Pictures of Creativity
E.T. in Plastic Pipe
I was in Nebraska City, NE last week for a board meeting with Nature Explore. For the first time, I actually had an opportunity to do some exploring in Nebraska City. One morning I came across this plastic plumbing pipe sculpture in the window at Bohl Plumbing and Heating. After looking closely at this plastic plumbing pipe sculpture, I think it’s actually E.T., the extraterrestrial. It was important to get a picture of the pluming pipe E.T. at Bohl Plumbing and Heating because it demonstrates, as I so often point out:
- You can bring your creativity to work in a variety of ways.
- Creativity is not the exclusive domain of what society typically thinks of as creative fields!
Dilbert and Charlie Brown in Post-it Notes
This example of downtown creativity comes from the downtown headquarters of Andrews McMeel Universal, the Kansas City-based published and features syndicate. Andrews McMeel Universal syndicates both Peanuts and Dilbert, and earlier this year, it adorned the windows of its downtown headquarters with sticky note representations of Charlie Brown and Dilbert. Once again, these are great examples that you can have fun and creativity take place at work and still be completely consistent with your brand messaging.
Verzion and Guerrilla Marketing its Fastest 4G Network
This final instance of downtown creativity, also from Kansas City, derives its creativity from a guerrilla marketing strategy. While the photo was taken from the H.R. Block headquarters when I was there for the iKC Sparking Innovation Conference, the huge Verizon advertisement on the side of the building has to be fully visible from the top floors of the nearby Sprint Center in the Kansas City Power & Light District.
The Verizon Fastest 4G Network building is a wonderful guerrilla marketing strategy: if your competitor has a specific territory locked up (i.e., a sports stadium and a retail store), why not use a big, non-traditional sponsorship strategy to both reach your competitor’s customers while making yourself an irritant. All this non-traditional sponsorship strategy takes is a creative perspective to identify sponsorship assets (i.e. the side of a building) that others would walk right past.
What types of downtown creativity do you see where you live?
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