What do customers and businesses have in common with each other? They both want a unique experience. Creativity is the strategy that every competitor strives for and is afraid of. Speaker Duncan Wardle knows exactly how to inspire creativity after serving 25 years as the Vice President of Innovation & Creativity at the Walt Disney Company.

Wardle believes every person possesses their own groundbreaking inventiveness to think outside the box that society has placed them in, but how do you do it? How do you take the steps to turn on that light bulb in your head leading to your customer’s ultimate participation in your company and your competitors’ worst nightmare?

If you believe in it, so will your customers.

Almost everyone has been on the phone with a telemarketer whose confidence in their product was as low as the enthusiasm in their voice. So what do we do? Hang up the phone. 

However, what if there were salesmen who actually loved their product and trusted that what they were selling was magic. 

Instead of talking on and on about how fantastic what you are selling is, you could discuss with your client how it has impacted your life in a positive light and how it might impact your customer’s life. Making it a bit more personal will make customers feel like they’re talking to an actual human rather than a robot. 

They will hear the passion in your voice when talking about the product and passion is what every customer desires in a company. No matter what, this is what is going to separate your company from its competitors.

Turn problems into opportunities.

Often, companies go into panic mode when circumstances go wrong, but rather than letting the issue hinder your establishment, build off of it and look for room for improvement. 

Wardle gives the example of when Amazon’s quick delivery service changed how long customers wanted to wait for something and Disney’s long lines were no help. Wardle and his team transformed this threatening problem into an opportunity to serve Disney’s customers in a different and better way. 

Thinking outside of the box and innovatively will put you 10 steps ahead of your competitors because most will become discouraged and not work as hard. However, this is the time when you have to be twice as inventive to get out of this rut. 

Today, Disney’s clients can book everything in advance so customers can get on the rides and meet cast members just as lightning fast as Amazon’s delivering services. This modification goes to show even the biggest complications can be turned into a blossoming for your company so your customer’s experiences become “magic.”

Continue to ask “Why?” and you will always have your childlike creativity.

As children, the way we learned was constantly asking “Why?” to everything we saw, but we often lose sight of that method when becoming adults. Wardle greatly emphasizes this is the brainstorming culture that every company needs to implement in their employees. 

A common brainstorming strategy Disney implements in their meetings is bringing in someone who is not in their department to provide a completely different perspective. The reason for doing this is that this outside source will bring to the table an idea that will spark an idea in someone else and people will feed off each person’s unique design in their head.

Thinking what does my customer want and why do they want this will lead you to a continuous line of fulfillment for your customer instead of focusing on what product they want and why they want it. 

Creativity will always bring satisfaction to your client base and create the most unique encounter with a company they’ve ever had just like Walt Disney has brought to its customers for over 90 years.

Bella Wygant is Bigspeak’s newest intern previously having published articles in the King’s Page. She is excited to attend Cal Poly in the Fall of 2019 studying as an English major.