Do not Think Differently. (Episode 102)
Interview with Anders Nyland, Chief Executive Officer/Director of Tourism at Visit Bergen.
Perhaps the iconic Apple ad campaign with the message “Think Different” led a lot of creative people down the wrong path.
The word “different” means: “not of the same kind: partly or totally unlike another”.
In other words – it implies that you compare yourself to someone else.
But genuine creativity is about being true to who you are. A true creative is not bothered about comparing themselves to others.
So do not “Think Different”; instead, “Think In Your Own Way.”
I was reminded of this message post a conversation with Anders Nyland, Chief Executive Officer/Director of Tourism at Visit Bergen.
We talked about how one destination (in his case, Bergen in Norway) can promote itself when there are thousands of other fantastic tourism locations trying to promote themselves as well.
Anders told me about their new campaign that they have just launched. It’s called “I love Bergen, and I think you will too” and it features people from other countries who, for different reasons, now live in Bergen. In the ads, they show what they love about their new hometown in a way that their fellow citizens of their country can relate to.
In other words, a foreign local, making the foreign local.
For example: Christa from Washington DC, who has been living in Bergen for over 8 years, now stars in one of the ads trying to get more Americans to come to Bergen over Christmas because, as she says in the ad: “ “I love Bergen and I think you will too”.” (You can see that ad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbvc1bFqP-0)
Visit Bergen created these personal and targeted ads to make people in one country get a local connection to Bergen (The ads with Christa will only be shown to people in the USA, and the ads with a German living in Bergen will only be shown to people in Germany and so on.)
By doing these ads, Visit Bergen went against the trend of super flashy and expensive location ads that have been the norm for many destinations after Covid to try to get tourists back. But Visit Bergen did not set out to “be different.” Instead, they followed their heart and created an ad concept that they believed in.
They did not “Think Different”, instead, they “Thought In Their Own Way”.
The result is a campaign that stands out. An outstanding campaign, we could say.
What creative project are you working on at the moment? Try to make it as authentic, genuine and true to who you are as you can.
That will not just make it different, it will make it outstanding.
Fredrik Haren is The Creativity Explorer. He has spent the last 25 years traveling the world to learn as much as he can about human creativity. He is the author of ten books – including “The Idea Book” which was included in “The 100 best business books of all time”. Fredrik has been invited to speak more than 2000 times in over 75 countries on 6 continents, and he has inspired more than 1 million people from the stage.
As The Creativity Explorer, he aims to discover more about human creativity, be it from innovators in Silicon Valley or nomads in the desert of Mongolia in order to help more people discover their full creative potential.
24
Nov