Reinvention Rising

I WAS A SWEATY LITTLE KID when I first explored the basis of the creative process: combining existing things into new combinations. Of course, that’s not how I thought of it at the time. Then, I just thought “I hate mowing the lawn and getting covered with grass clippings when I empty them into the trash bag.” It occurred to me things would be a whole lot easier if I could somehow put the trash bag inside the catcher so that the clippings would fly right into the bag, which I could then remove, tie up, and abandon at the curb as I ran back inside to resume reading “The Secret Agent on Flight 101” or whatever Hardy Boys mystery I was in the grip of at the time. I tinkered with mower and bag briefly, and gave up quickly. (My eureka moment wasn’t accompanied by sufficient mechanical skills to move from idea to innovation.) But I recall vividly what lingered in my mind.

“Maybe someday,” I thought, “I’ll be a ‘reinventor.’”

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The NINO Principle: Nothing In, Nothing Out

“We need you to write a brochure about Bimini” It was more than a decade ago and I was a copywriter at a small advertising/marketing firm specializing in hospitality — hotels, airlines, tourist destinations and such — and a young account executive who didn’t know any better had stopped by to give me one of my first assignments. “Great. What’s a Bimini?” (OK, I was a bit young myself …) Turns out it’s an island famous for being one of Ernest Hemingway’s get-aways. A client about to open a new resort there needed a marketing brochure — and soon. I asked when I could get briefed on the details of the resort, find out what would appeal to visitors, maybe even go see the place. The AE told me she didn’t have any information, had only enough budget to give me two-and-half billable hours to write the thing and was hoping to see a first draft that afternoon. I was puzzled and thought surely I was misunderstanding something. “How am I supposed to write a brochure about something I don’t know anything about?”

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Painful Insights

I GET HEADACHES. Little tension headaches and major three-day migraines that have landed me in the ER twice, driven me into the hands of neurologists, the tubes of MRI technicians and the grateful hearts of prescription and OTC painkiller manufacturers everywhere. So I’m interested in just about anything having to do with headaches. Which is why I was intrigued with a new product recently.

Heard of “HeadOn”? It’s the headache relief you “apply directly to the forehead” as the product’s unrelentingly repetitive TV spots have burned into my brain. I consider most OTC remedies irrelevant considering the magnitude of my migraines, and I’m especially disdainful of low-budget ads that shout at me, but for whatever reason I recently tried the stuff. I’m happy I did, for three reasons.

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