Ready?

Here’s what you do:

STEP 1: Take your product (e.g., Thing 1).

STEP 2: Take something else, anything else (e.g., Thing 2). 

(Drawing a blank here? Google “random noun generator” for help sourcing ideas. I do this all the time.)

STEP 3: Put Thing 1 and Thing 2 together in a flush way — a way that makes someone feel excitement or delight, curiosity or intrigue or levity.

If you do the last step well, you’ll have something new, something creative.

Creativity is 1 + 1 = 3.

Combining 2 or more things that don’t typically go together is an act of creativity, whether you’re making an ad or a poster or a sculpture or an app or dinner or anything else.

(It's really that uncomplicated.)

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P.S. 

STEP 1 and STEP 2 should be fun and relatively easy (i.e., the creative brainstorming).

STEP 3 is less fun and significantly harder (i.e., the creative work).

P.P.S. 

Great TV commercials are almost always the product of 1 + 1 = 3 work.

A few examples from this past Super Bowl: 

• Cheetos + MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”

• Reeses Take 5 bars + common idioms

• Little Caesars + sliced bread

A few more: 

• Doritos + cowboys

• Walmart + space

• WeatherTech + dogs

What’s your favorite 1 + 1 = 3 ad? 

Feel free to post it in the comments on LinkedIn.

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