Creative Challenges ROCK: On Bohemian Rhapsody and Business Communications

Creative Challenges. Whether it’s a design difference, finding the right audience or writer’s block, a creative challenge is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, finding the way to overcome that obstacle may work out better.

The Road Not Taken
Queen Rocks. Nice casting, 20th Century Fox.

Try something new. Do things YOUR way. Take the path less traveled. So many cliches for something not at all easy: being creative.

Factual inaccuracies aside, Bohemian Rhapsody is the story of Queen, Freddie Mercury and one of the greatest rock performances of all time. While it took a several cinematic licenses for the [unnecessary] sake of dramatic effect [truth works too], the movie did touch on a few truths about the creative process.

  1. Hard is Good. It’s not supposed to be easy. Challenges in the movie were finding the audience, the support, the resources to do what they wanted as artists. It’s the same in business, whether launching a blog or getting management to back your project.
  2. Formulas are bad. Of course there’s always a “by the numbers, go with what’s working” villain in the story; BR‘s was a record label guy. In most companies, it’s middle management, the “we’ve always done it this way” leaders who call for change but don’t really support it.
  3. Teams that challenge each other make each other – and the work – better. The push back, the brainstorming sessions, the edits and rewrites are a key part of the creative process. Testing the website for the end user; writing copy more for the employee vs. HR and management; making others outside your silo part of the team are many of the legit ‘out of the box’ approaches to overcoming most creative challenges.
My creative process usually requires more booze, but YMMV.
When Success Is Bad For Business

Critics hated the song but as we all know, Bohemian Rhapsody is now considered by many a creative masterpiece. See also, many Queen classics.

Walking out of the theater, I immediately thought of how often movies get business wrong. The movie reminded me of Burnt, which also showed how complacency with success stifles creativity, while challenges and a strong willed team push us forward to new levels of creative genius.

As a writer, a designer and a communications strategist, I’ve often had my creativity tested. Every time it’s hard but once overcome, almost always the result is something better.

How do you handle creative challenges, for the better? 

Photo credits: 2oth Century Fox and Memecenter

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