CALIFORNIA JMP Creative's work is all fun and games

Play fuels the creativity that can spawn ad campaigns and new products, Jim McCafferty says.
ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Jim McCafferty has a dream company. He and his 28 employees sit around all day playing with toys. Sometimes the Los Angeles Lakers cheerleaders drop by. Other times, it's a chimpanzee.
There's an 8-foot Tyrannosaurus rex in one office.
"Come sit in my spaceship," McCafferty, 34, said during a tour of the offices of JMP Creative, which from the outside looks like a nondescript industrial park in Santa Ana, Calif.
McCafferty, who was a professional magician, helps ad agencies, toy companies and movie studios develop creative ideas and products.
"Most companies are not set up to be creative," McCafferty said, "yet companies have to be creative to survive."
Some business owners think being creative is like being funny: You either are or you aren't. But JMP earns seven-figure revenues making creativity happen for all sizes of companies, from small fry to Fortune 500. McCafferty offered to share some of his techniques.
Yes, you can create creativity, he insists.
Popular campaigns
First, JMP's credentials: The firm developed Fountain Guy, a marketing campaign for Texaco's Star Mark gas-station convenience stores. The campaign was supposed to run for three months but was so successful, it lasted more than three years. JMP also created Tekno, a robotic puppy that Toy Book magazine rated the top toy of the 2000 Christmas season.
But mostly, JMP is unknown even though its ideas have produced some highly visible ad campaigns and toys.
"A lot of our clients don't want it known that they didn't develop their great ideas in-house," McCafferty said.
JMP is neither manufacturer nor ad agency. "We're the idea guys," McCafferty said.
Stimulating surroundings and people who are willing to play are the foundation of a creative environment.
Having fun
"Play is really, really important to creativity," McCafferty said as he opens a door into a toy room stocked better than Toys 'R' Us. "I highly recommend such a room if you want to innovate."
His employees can come in and play the latest video games. Sometimes he brings in a group, grabs two toys at random and asks them to dream up new products based on a combination.
Kathy Vosters of B-little and Co., a New York promotional-marketing firm who has worked with JMP, said people are more creative when surrounded by many different items.
McCafferty is always introducing activities to sharpen his employees' creative focus.
Recently, he gave each a baby doll and said, "Do something fun with this."
Some of the results were an Anna Nicole Smith doll, a butterfly and "Hellboy."
He has combined all these techniques and more into a concept-development exercise he calls Nitro that is like brainstorming on steroids.
"Companies used to bring me in to run brainstorming sessions," he said. "I created [Nitro] because I wasn't getting enough out of the sessions. You can't just lock people in a room with a white board."
Power planning
A typical two-day Nitro takes three weeks to plan. With the client, McCafferty defines specific goals for the session, such as a new revenue stream or a new product category.
"Nitro must have focus; you can't have too many objectives," he explained.
JMP staffers develop custom tools and exercises for the session. These activities must keep the momentum going and keep the work entertaining and fun. That's where the Laker girls and chimpanzee come in.
"We have to break down the corporate mentality," he said.
The client brings key employees to Nitro, but JMP salts the sessions with people who are creative for a living.
Nitro works because it focuses on what a client wants to accomplish and is driven by McCafferty's energy and charisma, said Joel Hochberg, owner of Adhoch Consulting in Los Angeles.
"At Nitro sessions, what I saw were clients, not all of whom were creative, who created things that amazed even themselves," Hochberg said. "A lot of good ideas miss the mark for solving problems because they're not centered to relevancy for the audience."
While participants throw out hundreds of ideas, JMP employees record them and later cull the ideas, refine and enhance them and deliver a report of the very best, McCafferty said.
Here's where creativity reaches its limit.
"So many companies are risk-averse," he said. "They say they want to innovate, but when you give them ideas, they can't imagine what to do with them."