How To Get Better Ideas (part one)

AdMedia,  Oct 15, 2003  by Nick Morgan

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By NICK MORGAN, creative director at Gulf Saatchi & Saatchi, Manama, Bahrain. This is the first of six how-to articles Morgan is writing for AdMedia about the generation of unique ideas.

This year Grey NZ found out first hand the importance our industry places on an original and unique idea. It wasn't just the fact that the idea may or may not have been plagiarized, what it showed was the value we attach to an idea that can make consumers stand up and take notice.

Anyone would think that originality was hard to come by in an industry that thrives and depends upon it. And they could be right. If you consider how many people worldwide are employed in advertising, and how many people actually win recognition for their efforts, I bet the percentage is not even 1%.

Says Edward de Bono, he of lateral thinking fame, "There's nothing of more worth and value today than a unique, original idea".

So why is it that only a select few have the ability to come up with unique ideas that literally make us kick ourselves and wish "why didn't I think of that?"

I've discovered, from my experience and observation, that thankfully creativity is not all about having a special "thing", or a "gift". Great news for the rest of us who look on with more than a tinge of envy and shrug our shoulders, perhaps consider ourselves unlucky, especially when it comes around to awards night.

The answer to creative excellence is simple. Productivity. The truth of the matter is that the award-winning minority are no more radically different in their DNA than anyone else. They just work harder.

I heard it said that when it comes to ideas "you must kill your first-born". Well, I have a theory that says perhaps we should kill our first 40.

Productivity precedes greatness.

Picasso is estimated to have produced 20,000 pieces, of which less than 100 exist today. Mozart is attributed with over 600 pieces, and perhaps the greatest of all, Einstein's monumental discovery of E=MC2 was supported by another 248 published papers.

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, not all of them masterpieces. In fact, most of them were no better than his contemporaries', some even worse. The originator of the theory of evolution, Darwin, produced another 119 publications in his lifetime.

But the father of productivity must surely be Thomas Edison. While his inventions of the light bulb and the phonograph changed the world, what is less well known is that he registered 1093 patents during his lifetime - a record to this day. Edison's view of creativity as "good, honest, hard work" is a far cry from the trappings associated with the word today - his famous quote, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration", is still heard in agency corridors, but seldom adhered to.

In retrospect, 40 possible solutions to a brief seems a bit light. That doesn't mean that the first or second solution is not "the one", it simply assures that you've purged the common, habitual ideas that produce the usual, and generated more imaginative alternatives than you otherwise would.

To illustrate this, think about the above list of five words. Write the first association that occurs for each word. Now do this five more times, each time writing something different from the association you gave the same word on the previous occasions.

It's noticeable that the later associations are much more original and unique. That's because the brain is a self-sorting filing system and positions the more usual and expected responses first. By arranging to give responses that are not common or dominant you are experiencing an increase in originality and imaginativeness.

When developing ideas, turn off the natural critic, and just produce. There's always a time to evaluate ideas and a time to produce. Set yourself an idea quota. I choose 40 at a time - the same as Edison. Perhaps in a group session you can go for 60, or even 100!

Write down every idea and discuss with your partner or with a group; try to bring it to life by looking at the positives and not focusing on the negatives. David Ogilvy had a habit of trawling the creative department waste bins, late at night. On many an occasion a copywriter would come in to work and see his crumpled idea flattened on his desk with Ogilvy's comments written in red, asking him/her why it was dumped and asking them to pursue it.

Thankfully there are many tools that we can use to generate unique, original ideas and over the next six months we'll explore a few.

Areas to be covered include "Forcing Connections; Going To The Next Level", "Effective Brainstorming Techniques" and "Joy To Failure; In Defence Of The Creative Accident". If nothing else it may remind you of what you don't like about the creative process, but maybe it will offer another solution that can change the way you think.

You can download a free transcript of this article from www.creativedirector.co.nz.

Nick Morgan can be reached at nick@creativedirector.co.nz.

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