A brief yet powerful video that hits the point.
The genius, minimalist, and multi-award winning composer, Rick Rubin, shares this fantastic reflection on his creative process.
Source: "60 minutes
Rick Rubin is an artist. You might be thinking: yes, when you make art, the inspiration comes first and the audience comes second. It is for the artists.
However, this also applies to our profession and how we approach our work when creating.Because whatever you do, on many occasions you have the opportunity to create. Let's get on topic-
-Rubin :"The audience comes last." - Anderson Cooper (interviewer): "How can that be?- “Well, the audience doesn't know what they want. The audience only knows what they've seen before,” Rubin replies.
The audience comes last. What does it mean?
It is about not subordinating your idea to the market, especially at the beginning of it. When I say idea, I mean message, product, service, whatever you want to create.
If we focus on the market before giving the inspiration (=idea) some space, we will surely cut the creative process. Hence, will not let this "baby idea" take its first steps. ¿Why? Because you will find limitations before possibilities.
The limitations will be something like: I'd like to do this, BUT researches show it is not a trend, I don't know if it will work out, something similar already exists, there was something similar, and it didn't work (well, the first smartphone didn't work either), I'm going to see what others are doing, I have no guarantee that it will be a "success" , and... etc. (Market).
Just an ordinary example : you are passionate about writing, and you want to start a blog on a topic that you are also passionate about. If you put the audience before your idea, before what you are passionate about, the process will be something like this:
a) You investigate the topics that most attract the audience, YOUR topic is not among the "hot topics", you think "nobody is going to be interested".b) You visit blogs with similar themes, they are not "successful" (and hello, not many are at first). You think, again, no one is going to read me. End of idea.
By doing all of this before even writing your very first article, you haven't given yourself the opportunity to express the topic YOUR way. You don't know if it will work. You haven't even developed what you like to do (in this case, write).
Another example : when Steve Jobs thought of the very first iPhone. He had no guarantee that everyone would like it. Not even that anyone liked it at all. There were in fact other Smartphones on the market, which had not managed to take off. The first touchscreen smartphone was created by IBM in 1994. Yes, 15 years before the iPhone. If this had been his starting point, if his idea had passed through the market filter, he would have abandoned the project. But, he was in love with his idea: an iPod, a phone, and an internet-connected device all in one product. And a pristine design from his point of view.
The audience doesn't know what they want. The audience only knows what´s come before.
In many cases, the audience doesn't know what they want, at least at a conscious level. Circling back to the previous example: the audience only knew they wanted the best mobile they could have, but they didn't know which one, or what it was like. The audience also knew, in the best case scenario, other smartphones. What Jobs imagined and subsequently released wasn´t 100% new (nothing is). He leveraged what already existed, he created something different, but above all, he created something in which he genuinely believed. Something with characteristics that he considered novel. But, the people did not know that they wanted that features. The audience only knew what they had seen before.
Disclaimer: with all this I do not mean that we totally ignore the market, that insights are useless, that we ignore trends, it means not obsessing over this from scratch.The audience comes last, nor does it imply forgetting common sense. Let's say, my inspiration tells me to invest 2 million dollars in a summer clothing store in Antarctica. Criterion and inspiration can go hand in hand. Nor am I saying that, as communicators, or entrepreneurs, or leaders, we don't think about the audience.
Conclusion.
What Rubin shares with us is that when creating, we give space to creativity without becoming obsessed with the final result, nor with what already exists, nor with what has failed in the past. If there's something you want to do, that inspires you, that you feel makes sense, and that (maybe) can make a difference, at least take the first step. And to take the first step, we cannot stifle our idea before it is born.
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