Tag: aashish chopra

Your creative team member is ignoring guidelines. How do you steer without stifling?

Creative people thrive on freedom & fun. Rules can limit how far their ideas flow. But here’s the thing: certain structures & best practices provide a foundation to build upon, rather than starting from scratch every time

For someone breaking the rules, going in different directions, I’d say: Encourage it, as experimentation.

Only through experiments do we find unexpected hacks. Give complete freedom to explore all directions during the ideation phase.

Then, when putting the project together, we pick and choose the best ideas while still following the guidelines. A creative person needs both freedom & a little structure. When we balance these, it’s a win-win-win for the project.

Remember, the goal is to enhance creativity, not stifle it

Even after 7 years, this video still driving tons of engagement, the power of timeless content

Topical content may last a day or week, but this video is still circulating on Instagram, just found that it was shared by 186,000 people recently.. (https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9ohYnvvCgW/)


To create timeless content:

1.. Focus on the basics, storytelling above all else, more real it feels the better.

2.. Dive deep into audience research, get to the tiniest micro-moments and pain points. Your products solves for one pain point of the audience, for all other pain points on the orbit.. use your content to solve them, your brand exists to make the lives of the audience better, through your products and content.

3.. Create authentically, no fancy graphics were used in this video.. actual book was printed and a top shot, oh and those are my hands

Tiny celebrations go a long way

Tiny celebrations go a long way… in achieving bigger goals…

Throwback photo from a few years back when all teams got together to look at the screen because our video was about to hit 2 million views. We had shots made out of… well, I won’t say what, but everyone did a shot. It was a tiny celebration, a quick 10-minute party, and then everybody got back to work.

But it’s those tiny celebrations that define the culture, the freedom, the camaraderie, friendships, and the drive to do it together. When the journey is fun, the outcome is also great.

So here’s to tiny wins and the big impacts!

You’re working on a video project: how to stop pleasing your boss or client?

Always remember: when you’re creating content, you’re not creating for yourself or the client, but for the audience of the client. Be obsessed about figuring out what’s in their interest first.. walk in their shoes, do research, deep dive into their pain points and micro moments.. make sure you have a lot of dots to connect for that one killer idea.

The goal of the video isn’t just for them to watch it. The goal is to make it so compelling that they share it. Make it worthy of sharing first.

When your audience is happy, & content is being organically shared.. stakeholders are happy. It’s win-win-win. If you start focusing solely on your client, you’ll be stuck in the race of pleasing them.

Stop pleasing your stakeholders, stop pleasing your clients & start creating genuinely authentic content for & about your audience. When you give them value for every second they watch, you’ve cracked it.