Thinking Inside Another Box: David Yaghoobi on Creativity Across Cultures
In the latest episode of Cozy Corner with Hossein Nasiri, the spotlight turned to David Yaghoobi—an English-born creative art director and co-founder of DYMO agency, who has spent nearly two decades leaving an indelible mark on Iran’s advertising and branding landscape. Born and raised in the United Kingdom, Yaghoobi grew up surrounded by the wit, wordplay, and sharp humor of British culture. Yet his defining creative turning point came at the age of twenty-seven, when he moved to Iran, a country whose language he did not speak and whose cultural codes were completely foreign to him. What could have been an obstacle became the foundation of his career: estrangement turned into opportunity, and unfamiliarity became a gateway to innovation.
David’s arrival in Iran was not just a relocation; it was a cultural experiment that transformed both him and the industry he entered. At the time, he admitted, he knew next to nothing about the country—so little that he half-expected camels at the airport. Instead, he encountered a bustling urban society with its own complex traditions, contradictions, and ambitions. That shock of difference became fertile ground for creativity. In a landscape constrained by regulations, client conservatism, and cultural sensitivities, he found new ways to tell stories, build brands, and connect with audiences. Over the years, he collaborated with both local and international agencies, working on campaigns for Samsung, Sony, Unilever, and Danone. What began as a gamble in a foreign culture turned into a body of work that helped shape Iran’s contemporary advertising scene.
Creativity Across Two Worlds
One of the most compelling themes in the conversation was the contrast between British and Iranian creativity. In the UK, Yaghoobi explained, advertising has long been rooted in language. Headlines, puns, and clever turns of phrase shaped the culture, with humor and wit central to the art of persuasion. Copywriters often rose to become creative directors, steering campaigns through language-driven storytelling.
In Iran, however, the creative emphasis shifted toward visual storytelling. Despite Iran’s literary heritage—poets like Hafez and Saadi are revered—modern advertising became more image-based. Clever juxtapositions, striking posters, and bold visuals carried more weight than wordplay. For Yaghoobi, this cultural shift was puzzling yet invigorating. It forced him to adapt from a word-centered creative tradition to one where visuals bore the burden of storytelling.
He illustrated this with examples. For Unilever’s Lux soap, the global slogan “Tempt them with your delicious soft skin” had to be rewritten for Iran. Nearly every word—tempt, delicious, skin—was forbidden under local regulations. The final campaign was reduced to a bar of soap and a safe tagline. For Rexona deodorant, international visuals featured women’s bare underarms. In Iran, regulators demanded edits until even the curve of the body was flattened to a straight line. These experiences revealed both the difficulty and the opportunity of Iranian advertising: when words and images were restricted, imagination had to find new outlets.
Defining Creativity
For Yaghoobi, creativity is universal in nature, but its expression is shaped by context. “Creativity is the solution of innovation,” he told Nasiri. It is not bound to nationality or geography—it is a way of thinking that emerges from dissatisfaction, problem-solving, and the urge to make meaning.
From childhood, he had been experimenting with this mindset. He staged puppet shows in his backyard, charged neighbors for tickets, and even built arcade-style games that rewarded players with prizes. At twenty-one, he founded his own design agency and an art publishing house in the UK. Campaigns that began as posters quickly expanded into integrated ideas: branded lunchboxes for university students, keepsakes that turned marketing into personal memory. What mattered was not the medium but the mindset—seeing beyond what was asked and delivering experiences that resonated.
When he entered Iran’s advertising world, he discovered that one person often handled everything: art direction, copy, music, and production. Only later, while working abroad, did he realize that these roles were usually divided among teams. Yet this breadth of responsibility helped him see creativity as holistic, not compartmentalized. It was less about perfect definitions than about the ability to reframe problems until solutions emerged.
Thinking Inside Another Box
Perhaps the most memorable insight from Yaghoobi’s conversation was his rejection of the tired cliché: think outside the box. For him, the phrase was misleading. Telling people to think without boundaries, he argued, was like telling them nothing at all. A blank canvas can be paralyzing. Instead, he and his partner coined the method “think inside another box.”
The method was part role-play, part improvisation. During brainstorming sessions, they would ask: If Agency X were doing this campaign, what would it look like? Or, How would a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Japanese creative team approach this brief? By shifting perspectives, they unlocked ideas that would not have surfaced otherwise.
This playful approach reduced the pressure of forced originality. Instead of demanding impossible novelty, it encouraged perspective-shifting as a form of creativity. Sometimes, jokingly imitating another agency’s style led to unexpected breakthroughs. The humor of role-playing loosened the team, and ideas flowed more freely.
He even applied this philosophy to hiring. Candidates were asked to play Pictionary during interviews. The goal was not artistic skill but adaptability: could they find ways to communicate an idea to someone unfamiliar with it? Could they keep trying until the audience understood? Those who gave up or blamed the viewer were unsuitable; those who adapted until meaning was clear showed the mindset of a true creative.
Teams, Talent, and Challenges
Yaghoobi also highlighted the differences in team structures between the UK and Iran. In Britain, the industry was built on copywriter–art director pairs under the supervision of a creative director, who guided but rarely ideated directly. In Iran, by contrast, creative directors often conceived campaigns themselves, pitched them, and oversaw their execution. The lack of structured teams and role clarity made the industry more chaotic but also more fluid.
Talent management posed another challenge. Salaries in Iran were too low to retain top creatives. “The good ones leave,” Yaghoobi remarked. Many emigrated to Canada or Europe; others launched competing agencies. Those who stayed often faced burnout or limited opportunities. To recruit effectively, he devised trial projects, situational tasks, and games that revealed problem-solving skills rather than just polished portfolios. Yet the larger challenge remained systemic: without fair compensation and long-term planning, talent inevitably drained away.
Creativity in Context
Beyond structures, Yaghoobi reflected on the deeper cultural foundations of creativity. He traced Britain’s emphasis on problem-solving to its history of individuality, Protestant independence, and legal traditions that limited monarchy and empowered courts. This emphasis on the individual fostered a culture of questioning systems and thinking independently.
In Iran, paradoxically, constraints also created freedoms. Regulators restricted advertising, yet the absence of heavy legacy systems left room for experimentation. The country’s youthful demographics and early-adopter mentality made it fertile ground for digital innovation. Whereas British tradition often reinforced old systems, Iranian society improvised its own rules in real time. Creativity thrived not despite the contradictions, but because of them.
The Shifting Industry
Globally, the advertising industry is in flux. Yaghoobi described the collapse of the creative middle: mid-level agencies once sustained by traditional budgets are disappearing. On one end, massive productions like Super Bowl ads still command creativity; on the other, individuals and influencers generate DIY content. The middle ground, once the domain of agencies, is vanishing.
In Iran, however, the absence of entrenched legacy structures may prove advantageous. Without heavy traditions weighing it down, the industry can “leapfrog” into new models. Social media has become the new marketplace of attention. Instagram dominates Iranian digital life, while Facebook and TikTok play bigger roles abroad. The median age in Iran is younger than in the UK, making its audiences more restless, experimental, and willing to adopt new platforms.
This fluidity means that Iranian creatives may not face the same structural crises as their British counterparts. Instead, they can embrace the democratized messiness of today’s media landscape.
AI and the Future of Creativity
No 21st-century conversation about creativity is complete without addressing artificial intelligence, and Yaghoobi approached the subject with both skepticism and fascination. On one hand, he lamented the flood of shallow, AI-generated content—the “noise” of generic phrasing and uninspired ideas. On the other hand, he compared it to the early days of Photoshop. Just as designers once feared software would replace them, AI too could eventually become a powerful ally for creatives who know how to guide it.
He uses AI for brainstorming, sense-checking, and occasionally for production. In one project, AI-generated images ended up on billboards around the city—sparking debates online about which visuals were “real” and which were artificial. For Yaghoobi, such debates proved that AI was already part of the creative conversation, whether people liked it or not.
His strangest AI encounter came during a late-night dialogue with GPT, when he asked it to speak freely, unconstrained by rules. Out of the exchange came the mysterious word “xhal”—described as the realm from which creativity drips before expression. Whether glitch, hallucination, or invention, the word became a metaphor for the mystery at the heart of creativity. AI may be noisy, but sometimes, in the noise, lies a spark of meaning.
The Democratization of Creativity
For Yaghoobi, the most exciting development is the democratization of creativity. Where once agencies and gatekeepers controlled cultural production, now anyone with a phone can create, publish, and influence. This democratization is messy—filled with uneven quality and superficial content—but also liberating.
He embraces this mess. Freedom, he insists, is worth the noise. Mentoring startups across Iran, he found joy not in flawless campaigns but in people discovering their voices. Cozy Corner itself, he told Nasiri, is an example of this new world: a show that bypasses traditional systems, connects directly with audiences, and thrives in a digital ecosystem that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago.
Conclusion
From childhood puppet shows to multinational campaigns, from British wordplay to Iranian visual boldness, from traditional agencies to AI-driven experiments, David Yaghoobi’s journey embodies creativity as a negotiation with culture, constraint, and possibility. His philosophy of “thinking inside another box” reminds us that creativity is less about escaping limits than about reframing them.
His career reflects not only the story of one individual but also the broader transformation of the creative industry: from hierarchical agencies to democratized platforms, from rigid traditions to playful experimentation, from analog posters to digital algorithms. Through it all, Yaghoobi demonstrates that creativity is not a static skill but a living practice—one that adapts, translates, and evolves across cultures and technologies.
In an era where boundaries blur and tools multiply, his reflections offer both reassurance and challenge. Creativity, he insists, is not about perfection. It is about adaptation, perspective, and the courage to embrace both constraint and freedom. Whether through a soap campaign reduced to silence, a billboard co-created with AI, or a mysterious word like xhal, his story reveals that the essence of creativity is not what we make but how we continue to make sense of the world around us.
