033: The business of ideas
[Before - Session 11] Let's talk about certainty, subjectivity and paying the bills
I’ve written plenty about the challenge facing a creative person charged with developing an idea. This might not seem like much. After all, most people typically have an abundance of ideas every single day—about what to eat for dinner, a new route to the office, something provocative for a colleague.
But in the realm of advertising, ideas are supposed to do more.
They’re supposed to affect change. Ideally, to change the world. This might mean “change the world” in a small way—elicit more clicks, more conversation, help the sales team acquire an incremental win. Or it might mean save our (economic) bacon. It might mean help grow our top line 10% year on year.
The difference between those two stories, between an incremental versus seismic advance, is often a difference in attribution and professionalism. And it’s the subject of tomorrow’s class; the last major theme of the Future of Advertising course. It’s time to talk about efficacy and results.
I think there are two sides to this coin.
1️⃣ It’s never enough to have ideas. You have to protect them, too.
As Robert Grudin put it in my favorite book, The Grace of Great Things, “Creativity is dangerous. We cannot open ourselves to new insight without endangering the security of our prior assumptions.” That’s the what-profound-ideas-actually-achieve result. You can’t un-see or un-feel or un-realize. The idea has changed you. Changed the world. This is what GE and BBDO were conveying with their brilliant TV spot, Ideas are Scary.
Getting there, getting that far, is difficult. Because humans.
So the business of ideas is initially to have them, and secondarily to protect them enough to survive subjective review, often by people who would really like to know, would like to be certain, this idea (which they don’t grasp as deeply as those who created it)…will work.
That’s why ideas have to be legible enough, have to be cooked and refined enough for the audience to grasp them, to take in their potency. That’s why there are storyboards and prototypes and rehearsals and spellcheck. That’s why there are comps labored over and re-printed and designed to death. You can absolutely polish a turd. But turd ideas are typically obvious well before refinement occurs.
The first step in achieving efficacy with any idea is getting it sold.
2️⃣ Ideas can suggest a new certainty, but only you can guarantee it
Albert Einstein said, “The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution.” Same often goes for selling the certainty of an idea, and then achieving it. The formulation of the problem is everything. Clarifying, confirming, re-confirming and re-iterating the WHY we’re pursuing a strategic direction, and thus, this specific idea, is everything.
Modern creative briefing should help. The best briefs focus on efficacy and results up front, i.e. How will [whatever it is we’re trying to achieve] deliver a net positive opportunity (in revenue, reputation, etc.)? How we’ll measure success ought to be baked-into the strategy, the brief and the comms plan—especially if we’re working within the more nascent aspects of technology. Quite literally, will the CFO care about clicks or revenue, foot traffic or pre/post share gain, or engagement within an experience and what specifically = engagement? Get it wrestled into words, talk it through, and then architect how you’ll track it, and then don’t stop measuring and reporting it.
I’m thrilled we will be welcoming someone much smarter than myself to class to discuss all things efficacy and results. Holly Matson Spaeth is the Vice President, Corporate Branding and Partnerships at Polaris Inc. and knows quite a few things about selling and buying ideas, and the business of delivering certainty.