I believe, to my core, that everybody has the potential to be creative - whatever form that creativity takes - and that to encourage such development is a noble thing. More interesting to me, though, are the blocks that get in the way, often without us noticing, and hinder the creativity that resides within any thriving company.

Most of these templates relate to the principle of unexpectedness. For example, the Extreme Consequences template points out unexpected consequences of a product attribute. One ad emphasizes the power of a car stereo system—when the stereo belts out a tune, a bridge starts oscillating to the music, and when the speakers are cranked up the bridge shimmies so hard that it nearly collapses. This same template also describes the famous World War II slogan devised by the Ad Council, a nonprofit organization that creates public-service campaigns for other nonprofits and government agencies: “Loose Lips Sink Ships.

The value of the stories does not come from unexpectedness in and of itself. The value comes from the perfect alignment between Nordstrom’s goals and the content of the stories. These stories could just as easily be destructive in another context.

The lesson for the rest of us is that if we want to make people care, we’ve got to tap into the things they care about. When everybody taps into the same thing, an arms race emerges. To avoid it, we’ve either got to shift onto new turf, as Thompson did, or find associations that are distinctive for our ideas.

Differentiation is also linked to creativity and memorability. Creative people’s thoughts tend to jump among different ideas, and slogans and movie quotes that are phrased more distinctively…

Overall, then, similarity and difference can both be good and bad. Similarity feels familiar and safe but can also be boring. Difference can be exciting and stimulating but can also be risky.