When thinking about the few moments of
creativity in my life, I revert to my childhood. I have always
prided myself on being a perceptive person. With twenty cousins in a five-mile
radius of my house, I had to learn how to get along with many different
personality types. There are only three of us guy cousins among seventeen
girls. Because of this, I was forced to learn what girls liked. Secret Santa
was the worst! Imagine a twelve-year-old boy being forced to choose a gift for
his sixteen-year-old girl cousin. My mom would drag me to the mall and force me
to pick out the gift on my own. I cannot explain how embarrassing it is to give
a bad gift to one of my girl cousins. They do not even try to act like they
appreciate the gift. The sixteen other girls would join in and verbally destroy
me for my poor taste. Out of fear I had to learn what my cousins wanted.
This
scarring part of my childhood ended up helping me this past summer. I worked at
the National Basketball Association last summer and was tasked with creating
content for the NBA’s new Pinterest page. My boss gave me this assignment the
first week on the job. I had only known the NBA as one of the favorite hobbies
of young American men. I thought that their consumer based looked exactly like
me. I thought that it was just sports fanatics and kids who love players like
Lebron. On top of having a narrow view of the target market, I had never been
on Pinterest. I knew my sister looked at wedding ideas on the site but knew
nothing about its layout.
Naïve
and a little frustrated, I sought out a solution to this Pinterest problem. I
started researching who used Pinterest. I quickly found out that Pinterest is
primarily a female social network. I saw decorations, dresses, and cookie
designs. The only thing NBA related on the entire site was Dwyane Wade with his
shirt off in a GQ photo shoot (out of pride, I knew I couldn’t take that route
with this project). Instead, I started thinking about the aspects of the NBA
that appealed to women. I used the NBA’s marketing research to find out which
demographic of women was already categorized as “NBA fans” from previous
purchase decisions. My research told me that mothers were main consumers of NBA
merchandise among women. These moms were buying NBA apparel for their children.
Suddenly,
my years of purchasing gifts for demanding females had paid off. The mythical concept
of “cute” had been bashed into my brain for a reason. I knew how I would relate
the NBA to mothers on Pinterest. From all my girl relatives, I knew that a
specific team or a specific player is not primary motivating factor in their
decision to buy team apparel or a ticket to a game. I came up with the idea to
expand the NBA’s Pinterest page to “all things basketball”. I scoured the web
for all decorations that related to the sport of basketball. I found basketball
themed birthday party ideas. I found basketball themed bedroom pictures. I
added funny pictures of players off the court so moms would see the “non-thug”
side of the NBA players.
Creativity,
as described by Kelly, is often achieved by trying instead of waiting. My
situation with the NBA this summer involved doing exactly that. I tested
different Pinterest boards with my new concept. I tweaked each board as I
received feedback from supervisors and customers. I took a different approach
to find a solution to a problem that initially looked impossible. I used past
experiences to connect two seemingly unrelated ideas. Creativity helped make a
successful Pinterest page and helped engage the female demographic. I never
thought I would be grateful for my cousins’ abuse.
