DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA?

Thursday, December 13, 2007

“How’s that ad coming?”

The question is well-meaning. Innocuous. So it must only be the ignorance revealed that evokes in me such incandescent loathing.

To anyone who’s ever attempted to create an ad, it’s obvious that such a query is unanswerable.

If I was a mason laying brick, or even your wife, I could tell you how near I was to completion. So let me tell you: if you’re even halfway to an idea, you’re nowhere.

Because an idea is or it isn’t.

OK, smartass. What is an idea?

And for that matter, since there’s nothing new under the sun, what on earth is a new idea?

I’d say an idea(!) is a reorganization of information — usually, a juxtaposition of two things that have never before been considered together, the sum of which represents an original perspective. If it isn’t new, then it isn’t an idea. (And probably somebody else’s work.)

For our purposes, the better the idea, the more surprising it is. And it’s best when it reveals a previously hidden or unacknowledged truth (that is relevant to some benefit of our product).

Time is Everything

The struggle is the fresh bit. That’s what takes the time. For when deadlines loom pros and amateurs alike can sow previously harvested fields and produce perfectly passable, if not formulaic, product.

Generally, these are first-level “solutions” that any team, any agency (or worse, any client) could produce. They may not be embarrassing to any party. We’ve seen their like before. But because they ring familiar they can’t be electric. They just are.

The stereotype of the creative team staring blank-eyed at each other for hours isn’t false. And that’s because, as best as we can know, while we stumble, ideas are developed in an inaccessible back room somewhere in the sub-conscious.

I suspect that many people (most of whom are known to wear suits) believe there’s some sort of infinite intellectual warehouse that holds every possible solution to every possible advertising problem. Because that’s certainly how they react — with petulance, anger or threats — when, even after a day, their team has not “delivered the goods”.

From my experience in better agencies, it was never, ever for lack of trying or talent. But now, finally, there is an alibi in science. In a current issue of Scientific American Mind, Graciela Flores reports that in order to make hidden connections, the brain requires downtime and sleep.

Flores reports on work by researchers from Harvard Medical School and McGill University that examines relational memory;

“the ability to recognize hidden relations among our memories, a characteristically human feature, is vital for solving problems in creative ways.” Neurologist Jeffery Ellenbogen concludes, “The process of binding memories together evolves over time.”

That doesn’t mean inspiration can’t strike quickly. Crucial for idea generation is a propensity — a talent — for making unusual connections. Often quickly. But in this business, talent is mere price of entry. And worthy of no more discussion here.

Info Loading

To accept the model of the brain shuffling around memories is to acknowledge that information must be present to become a memory. (Duh.) This suggests a creative team should absorb as much information about the task as possible.

(But beware. Luke Sullivan, in “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This” — the closest thing a copywriter could ever have to a bible — quotes Mark Fenske: “Don’t ever give into the temptation to take the factory tour. Resist. It makes you think like the client. What happens is you’ll start to come up with the same answers the client does.”)

It should go without saying, this project-relevant information should be augmented by all kinds of other — seemingly irrelevant — life experiences and impressions, so that novel connections can be made. (The majority of the population doesn’t work for an agency or a production house; why are so many ads industry in-jokes?)

Practice Your Practice

From what I’ve seen, the best at what they do still have to work at it. There’s talent, there’s knowledge, there’s wisdom. And there is, and will always be, application. That doesn’t at all mean only on prestige assignments. The successful writer or art director knows the value of craft. And that craft must be honed on even the most mundane assignments.

Screenwriter Steve Pressfield, in The War of Art, wrote: “The professional is sly. He knows that toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.”

Now, on the subject of genius, who better to have the final say than Mozart? Many assume he was a natural, that his masterpieces came to him effortlessly. In The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp reveals the truth in a passage taken from his private correspondence:

“People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many a time.”

How’s that arpeggio coming, Amadeus?