Believe it or not, there's one ride at Disney World that never has a long line.
It features one of the greatest comedic talents alive, Eric Idle.


It was designed by the most talented "imagineers" on the planet, the ones at Disney.
And its subject is one we associate with Disney itself -- imagination.
Yet the ride, Journey Into Imagination, sucks.
It's not fun. It's not funny. And nothing about it seems especially imaginative.
How could this be?
I can only guess, but I suspect it's the result of having too much of what we think we can never have too much of: talent, ingenuity, money, resources.
And not enough of what we think we should always overcome: limits.
To stimulate creativity, imagination needs limits as much as corn flakes need milk.
Give me an unlimited budget to create an ebook on anything that comes to mind, and I'll draw a blank. Or worse, write bloated copy that sinks under its own weight.
But charge me with a specific audience. A precise proposition. A sharply defined budget and production schedule. And suddenly, my imagination will come alive as it rises to the challenge. And the resulting product will be stronger for it.
Imagination is not a butterfly that flitters about. (And it's certainly not a "figment," as Disney would have it.) It's a battle-scarred bruiser that needs something to wrestle with to stir it into action.
In these dark and troubling times, we marketers face formidable limits. Embrace them. The resulting rough-and-tumble may lead to our most genuinely imaginative work.