In the mid-1800s a young Louisianan named Paul Morphy took the chess world by storm. Much as Bobby Fischer would a century later, Morphy quickly swept aside any U.S. competitors and set out for Europe in search of more worthy adversaries. Few appeared, and - although this was before the advent of official world championships - Morphy was universally regarded as the dominant player of his time.

Morphy's great gift was an almost magical creativity at the chess board. In the long history of the game, few masters have approached his ability to "see" the whole chess board, let alone his combinative skills. Fischer said that Morphy could have dominated chess in the 1960s as he had in the mid-1800s, and today's reigning giant, Garry Kasparov, calls Morphy "the great chess artist."

Under Morphy's fine hand, chess pieces struck like lightning from the far corners of the board, working in perfect harmony to destroy an opponent. Nothing inspired more terror in Morphy's opponents than a piece sacrifice. Doom was sure to follow.

If genuine creativity was Morphy's talent, his true contribution to the game was the idea of disciplined and comprehensive piece development. Chess had been around for a couple of millennia by the time young Paul Morphy pushed his first pawn. But for whatever reason, it fell to this son of a New Orleans judge, barely 150 years ago, to first correctly perceive the importance of deploying and organizing all assets before initiating a campaign.

In that regard especially, Morphy has a great deal to teach those of us who have (whether justifiably or not) been labeled "creatives" in our professional lives. A few specifics:

‡ Every game is different. Chess players learn "pattern recognition" and often know immediately how to react in given situations (as do marketing, advertising, and public relations practitioners). But masters like Morphy also understand that games rarely unfold in exactly the same way - and that a clear head and a fresh eye are usually more valuable than encyclopedic book knowledge. Morphy probably would not be surprised to learn that, to this day, no supercomputer has been able to calculate the total number of positions that are legally possible on a chess board.

‡ Planning and preparation multiply the power of creativity. The more one studies Morphy's most famous games, the more it seems that his most explosive piece sacrifices and combinations were almost natural byproducts of his disciplined approach to the game. Not that lesser talents would have found many of his attacking moves, but it's clear that they usually arose only after he had developed his pieces and identified a weakness in his adversary's position.

‡ Even without bold creative, disciplined execution can carry the day. Many of Morphy's lesser known games are among his most interesting. While the chess world still delights in his dazzling combinative attacks, he probably won far more games with quiet but steadily superior positional play - by developing a small advantage, nursing it along and grinding his way to victory. In our world, likewise, solid planning, clear messaging, and steady execution can often be more effective than award-winning creative.

At our modest shop, I try to apply Morphy's lessons (and those of other chess greats) in addressing our client's challenges. The result is what I call a "whatever works" approach to meeting individual client needs. Understand the business objective. Inventory available resources. Analyze the competitive environment and assess the competition. Then develop and begin to execute a plan.

Without exception (and as with chess), the most successful and satisfying communications campaigns I've been part of have been those in which we were able to mold an overall strategy to meet the particular situation and put all the pieces in place before launching an attack.

For the Georgia Department of Transportation some years ago, we convinced its leaders to move beyond a traditional "let 'em work, let 'em live" approach to preventing highway work zone accidents, and to focus on the fact that fully three-fourths of the victims were motorists, not highway workers. Backed by solid research, we deployed a humorous advertising campaign as the tip of the spear and backed it up with aggressive event marketing (including the then-famous character, Coneman) and media relations. The result: a near-60 percent drop in work zone accidents and deaths.

For DeKalb Medical Center more recently, we relied predominantly on community grassroots and media relations to drive a campaign that helped enable that hospital to win state approval to build a new 100-bed hospital in the south part of the county. In that campaign, advertising played an important but secondary role, and was used defensively to blunt attacks from a competing hospital company.

As in chess, every new client engagement creates an opportunity to perform at a master level, to deliver not only memorable creative but also effective results. Applying Morphy's rules give us all the best chance to succeed.

It's your move.

A failed golfer, Charlie Hayslett took up chess several years ago. He is founder and CEO of Hayslett Group LLC.