Scott Morrison’s Art of Producing Applicable Creativity

We’ve recently introduced you to Scott Morrison, a former Diesel UK marketing and commercial director who has launched his Business Accelerator. Today we present some of Scott’s routes he took in order to grow, unlock and polish creativity, the one he has been recognized for by the global advertising and brand giants. His guide to success will surely help you look up to him and shape your way to reach the same.

1. Getting to commercially creative solutions

Being inspired by putting people’s talent to work on different problems, Scott Morrison’s advice on how to reach out to solutions is to get all areas of the business taking ownership and responsibility for the solutions that need to drive it forward.

Why shouldn’t the Junior Sales Executive come up with the PR strategy for a new launch if she’s particularly close to the audience? Or, the HR manager devise a sales approach because he has a particular skill in building incredible relationships?

It requires strong leadership to deliver this kind of approach – one, to allow people to take on seemingly unfamiliar tasks and second, to inspire the organisation to engage with the solutions if they’re not from the traditional source. Sadly, too many businesses follow set, staid paths to deliver commercial solutions and watch great talent leave their organisation because their unable to inspire them and build on their strengths.

2.  The importance of merging sales and marketing departments

The need to keep sales and marketing departments close to each other is a huge priority for businesses according to Scott’s professional experience.

Back to commercial creativity – anything that removes silos or ‘divisions’ within an organisation means that the right people’s talents can be unleashed in the right way to build the business. It makes running a business easier when you have everyone together, aligned under one vision and delivering incredible work that inspires them.

He says that though it was very challenging, UK was the only major market in Diesel to have this structure. The team responded fantastically and they realized that they could learn a lot from each other – they were able to extend their frame of reference and come up with ideas that were both creative and commercial with each other’s buy-in.

It was amazing to see that, and watching people grow as their talents got used in new ways inspired me greatly.

They grew the business, opened new distribution and found strengths that they could capitalize on to make them more engaging and relevant to their customers and consumers.

3.  Define your outcome and create magic

As business context doesn’t always refer to numbers, Scott explains that the most important thing for a company is to focus on the things that make a difference and to push their business into a right direction. It can be brand related, consumer focused or even internally focused. The key is to define the outcome that you want and create the magic to make it happen.

4. Find passion and stick to it!

Scott is currently working with 5 businesses to reframe their organisations to focus on unleashing talent from within to deliver a clear vision, goals and objectives. He uses psychometrics to create individual strength profiles which we then use to make sure the right talent is used in the right way to deliver the plan. If there are gaps, he helps them fill them and build an organisation on the power of its talents and strengths rather than its weaknesses or areas of development.

When leaders unleash the talent within their organisation, it is proven to deliver outstanding results. It’s my passion and that’s why I chose to do it every day.

5. Your brand in the digital world

In order to fuel the power of your brand into the digital channels, Scott advises to look beyond medium and ensure that you place absolute ruthless rigour to the power of your ideas.

6. Your creative environment should be…

Simple and clean – no distractions.

7.  What you  ❤  is what inspires you

I love human emotions, thoughts and feelings. I shoot environmental portraits because I love the way all those 3 things come to play in certain situations. A playful smile, a widened gaze or a desperately sad posture – everything I capture makes people reflect and I hope feel closer to their own feelings.

Scott particularly loves street photography from around the world. He says there’s a real beauty in capturing people when they’re in the throes of their everyday life – the power of the imagery hits home when you see that, whether you’re in Tokyo, Nairobi or Berlin, people are still focused on their internal emotions as they make their way through their world. He loves this commonality and says it is something we should all focus on it more instead of focusing on the negative differences between us all.

8.   Build the right vision for launching a business

Scott’s greatest passion is helping businesses unleashing talents in their organization. He believes the highest performing leaders in the world identify what they need to do to succeed, and unleash the talent in their teams to help shape how they get there collectively. By doing this, Scott says they inspire action from their teams because everyone feels accountability and responsibility to deliver. With that, it is possible to ensure that the right people are doing the right thing – they provide continual stimulation and development of people’s talents so that the right people continue to do the right thing better, over and over again.

I am passionate about accelerating business through the power of high performing teams. I have been doing it for nearly 20 years and have worked in and with some of the most incredible cultures that drive outstanding levels of performance (Nothing is Impossible at Saatchi and Saatchi, Only the Brave at Diesel, Just Do It at Nike, Be the Best with at British Army) winning awards with every team I have led.

9. Be self-aware and challenge the status quo

Having both agency and client experience as well as the focus on commercial creativity, Scott is helping some businesses evaluate their vision and strategies to develop strong creative output that delivers commercially. This is being well received with start ups as a way to powerfully communicate their creative ideas and deliver business plans in the short to medium term. The competitive edge here is being able to clearly articulate how your brilliant ideas and creativity will engage consumers and deliver a return for your investors.

We are accelerating business performance by unleashing the talent within organisations to appraise, develop and deliver the vision, goals and objectives for their business. We deliver this in 3 clear modules, allowing businesses to test and learn at a smaller level so that they can see the impact before rolling it out to the whole organisation. The modules are  – individual performance, departmental performance and full organisational performance.

As both approaches require brave, forward thinking and self-aware leaders to work, they’re definitely not for the faint-hearted, as Scott says. His clients agree that something powerful can happen when you believe in approaching things differently. He advises everybody to challenge the status quo and high performing teams on daily basis.

10. Inspire, mentor, guide and lead others

Mentoring the next generation is highly inspiring for Scott. It gives him perspective. The passion and creativity is infectious and with some help in directing that, the results are incredible for these young people he mentors. When people share with you how you have made a difference to their lives in whatever capacity, it is hard not to take notice. Great leaders inspire that kind of interaction and that’s exactly what he does at the Urban Synergy role-model programme.

Everyone has a responsibility to nurture, develop and unleash the talent of the next generation. Think back to when you were 18 or 19 – sometimes the road isn’t clear although you’re bubbling with ideas and passion.  There is so much opportunity and so many more challenges to overcome for some of them that guidance from an objective person can give them fuel for a long time. I encourage more people to get involved.

Scott advises everyone to find their passion. What it is that makes you smile is effortless and, according to Scott, you find time slips away when you do it. He urges everyone to make that the centre of their worlds. Then, there won’t be problems you cannot overcome because you are always focused around what makes you tick.

Coming close to Netocratic…

If you’re ever lucky enough to talk to Scott Morrison, not only will you be spellbound by the oozing energy but also by an incredible charisma which will make you recap about all the time you wasted working for inessential CEOs all your life. Make sure you don’t miss Scott in Graz this Spring. He’ll be casting brand spells at the Marketing Rockstars. See you there!