“All over the world, brainstorms turn into fine drizzles because the mood is too tense. Initial ideas are never shrink-wrapped and ready to go. They need open discussion, time to evolve and a welcome mat.”
John Hunt said that. Who, you might ask? Well, he started the agency I’m most proud of having worked at – hold on, I meant the other agency I’m most proud of having work at.
Right now, John is the worldwide creative director at TBWA. The reason I mention this is because it proves that he knew what he was talking about when he wrote that in his book, The Art of the Idea.
Ideas need room to breathe. They need to be allowed to take on a life of their own. They should challenge us, even feel a bit scary.
The scariness of ideas seems to have helped contribute over the years to an industry-wide perception that creativity and the right answer to a client brief are mutually exclusive things.
Have you ever had someone say that a piece of work is too creative? And that before this piece of work (a radio script, a press ad, an eDM) goes back to the client, it should be made less creative?
Whether or not a piece of creative work answers a brief should be the primary consideration. How creative it is shouldn’t be a point of discussion. Yes, there are good and bad ideas, but it is misguided to suggest that there is a sliding scale of creativity in the context of advertising. Or in any context, for that matter. If there were a sliding scale, who could possibly determine the place a piece of work occupies on that scale? Where, for example, would you say that Cadbury’s ‘Gorilla’ sits on this scale, in relation to the Sony Bravia ‘Balls’ spot? Both of which, incidentally, were masterminded by the same creative mind.
In coming up with an idea we are, as creatives, working within the parameters of a set of unique factors to solve a business problem. It’s lateral thinking. It’s logic. Clive James once wrote that a sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. And that’s what creative is. A business solution, dancing.
There are a million solutions to any client brief. All of them creative. They are one and the same. ‘Creative’ is a term that should be synonymous with ‘solution’. And, as such, we can bomb an idea for not being right. But we should never bomb it for being too creative.
We all need to shake out our welcome mats, and let those ideas in with open arms.