I was going to save some of these thoughts for a bigger post – complete with diagrams – but it’s been 2 months since I’ve written anything. The thoughts below are embryonic. I don’t mean for them to be anti/pro anyone or any department. But please share your constructive thoughts.
What’s an idea?
I’ve worked in digital agencies (some leaning more towards creative, some towards technology), through-the-line agencies, and run my own thing (magazines, events, music distribution), and what I’ve found across all of these businesses is that the idea of an ‘idea’ is often rarely understood in the same way by groups of people working in the same business.
There are people who are brilliant at writing scripts for TV ads, but who struggle to articulate in a compelling way what their ‘idea’ is. In the agency world, there are activation, promotion, brand, advertising, utility, content and all sorts of other ideas. Many people focus on what sort of idea is on the table and who can make money from it, rather than simply seeing them all as different ways to solve a problem.
A person more used to the ‘brand world’ may focus attention on developing thoughts like ‘Priceless’ for MasterCard, ‘Just Do It’ for Nike, whereas a digital person may focus on an ‘idea’ as being a Flash game, an interesting use of technology. Neither is wrong – depending on who they are talking to.
Personally, I’m interested in ‘ideas that get advertised’ rather than simply ‘advertising ideas’. But, I guess, even that distinction is meaningless to many.
Anyway, the last agency I worked at – Leo Burnett – had a lot of success with two particular campaigns through 2007. They were Earth Hour for WWF and The NameIt Burger for McDonald’s. Both campaigns won awards across a tonne of categories in a tonne of award shows.
Were the ideas promotional, brand, direct, digital? Does it matter? Or are these distinctions only useful to people who’ve grown up in the generation of agencies and industry organisations where these distinctions somehow impacted the business or social hierarchy?
‘An idea can come from anywhere.’ Sure, then what?
I’ve heard the phrase ‘an idea can come from anywhere’ so many times over the past few years.
It’s true – but I feel that when someone says it, they’re talking down the traditional control over an agency’s destiny that some creative departments have had and, instead, they’re trying to tell people who aren’t in that department that they will be more than paper-pushers. After all, few people join creative agencies simply to work out how much stuff costs.
Where this thought falls down – from what I can tell – is if the Creative Director doesn’t actually believe it. Ideas need ownership – start to finish.
To truly buy into the thought that an idea can come from anywhere, I feel a few things need to be acknowledged by agency management as well as by creative departments that don’t sincerely care what anyone else thinks (they are increasingly few and far between):
1. You work with smart people – whether they can use Photoshop or not
2. All of the people you work with know something you don’t
3. If you don’t tell them part of their role is to come up with stuff, they won’t
4. If they don’t get used to coming up with stuff, they won’t come up with good stuff
5. If you don’t fight for their (good) ideas, how can you expect them to fight for yours?
6. If you don’t talk to them about creativity, how are they ever going to ‘get it’?
7. Not everyone actually wants to go to Cannes – stop fighting, start listening
8. If people seem ‘random’ with their ideas, give them a one-pager to fill in so they can shape their thinking (idea name, insight leading to the idea, idea explanation in 25 words or less, how the idea addresses the business/brand strategy, etc)
9. Reward awesome thinking, wherever it comes from, whether it gets made or not (Leos was doing this when I left – great idea)
10. Set up a process that puts the right brains behind each problem at the right time
Did you say ‘process’?
The process thing is tough because coming up with ideas is, by definition, very random.
I’m currently thinking about ways to create process from this but my gut feeling is that each brief is different and needs the attention of a department store greeter in Japan to make sure the right stuff happens.
Essentially, I see three ways people can get involved in ‘ideas’ pre-execution.
They can:
1. Create an idea
[Traditionally the stronghold of the creative department]
2. Build an idea
[In some agencies, only when a creative department has established an idea do they hand it over to others to play with]
3. Craft an idea
[But what happens if the idea comes from outside the creative department? It still needs the skill of a copy writer and art director. Will it get embraced?]
Each of these areas requires different brains. A great creative team can often pull off all three; whereas a digital designer, a planner, a media strategist or buyer, an account person may only be able to help with 1 or 2.
Un-earthing the potential of each individual in an agency requires a bit of experimentation, a culture that expects everyone to be creative and leadership that works out what to do with that creativity. I’d also argue that it requires the Creative Director to lead not just their department – but the entire agency.
What do you think?
Have you worked somewhere that’s managed to bring out the best of everyone in the agency? How?
Photo courtesy Andrew Eberlin.
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