Sorry, loyal readers. I launched a series of columns about ideas, and very quickly I got a great idea of my own. Take a Caribbean vacation. So let’s see… where was I when I rudely interrupted myself?
I was saying that the idea is a wonderful and precious thing, but that it is also very delicate and fragile. Think of a new idea as a spark. If it falls on combustible material and gets plenty of oxygen, it can grow into a big warm fire. But much more often it will land on a rock, or be smothered, or be forgotten, or be squashed into oblivion by a big passing St. Bernard that didn’t even know it was there.
The same kind of thing happens to ideas… even in the marketing communications business, where ideas are really all we have. Let me give you a list of a few things that will destroy a tiny spark before it can become a big, warm, blazing idea.
Non-recognition. There are lots of little ideas hanging around all the time, and none of them have signs on them saying ‘I’M THE ONE!’ So people who aren’t experienced, or aren’t tuned in, can often fail to see which spark has the capacity to blaze.
This is, in my humble opinion, the most important function of any creative director. He/she must be able to spot the spark with the future, no matter where it comes from. Even more important, he/she must be able to teach young, talented spark generators to distinguish by themselves the potential explosions from the duds.
Chemistry. Maybe Thomas Edison invented the light bulb all by himself, but in our business it doesn’t work that way. Before our sparks can burn, they have to be handled by a dozen different people, including most or all of these: writer, art director, creative director, account manager, client, client, client, client, tv or print producer, photographer, illustrator, commercial director, music supplier, etc.
Each of these can stomp out the spark single-handed. This may not involve a conscious act of any kind – it can just mean a lack of understanding, wave-length, mutual vision. Or it can be a chemical thing, the right or wrong kind of teaming. Bogart + Bergman = Casablanca; Beatty + Hoffman = Ishtar.
Ego. N.I.H. – Not Invented Here – is a terrible enemy of the young idea. It’s usually not spoken out loud, but the thoughts are these:
‘This can’t be any good, it came from the Calgary office.’
‘This is a ten-million dollar pitch; are we really going to base it on a brainstorm from a twenty-thousand dollar junior copywriter?’
‘I’m the creative director and you’re not.’
And of course, most common of all…
‘Shit! That’s the client’s idea.’
I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Great ideas are too damned rare to worry about where they came from. If your ego constantly needs its glow replenished, remember this. When the idea is good enough, there is plenty of glow for everybody. When it isn’t, your only glow is the sweat you work up shovelling yourself out.
Checklists. ‘Hmmm, let’s see, is the product name in the first five seconds?’ ‘We have to feature the red package instead of the blue one, because people told us they like warmth.’ ‘Does the logo fill 80% of the available area?’ ‘Sorry, Mozart, there are just too many notes.’
People keep doing that – checking off a list of real or imagined virtures – and they wonder why the result is boring. That’s exactly why.
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Not unexpectedly, I have run out of room before running out of idea-killers. Come back next issue. There will be more.
John Burghardt, formerly president of a national advertising agency, now heads his own communications firm in Toronto.
