I was cleaning recently and found my old “journal” (for lack
of a better word) that I kept that quarter with ideas, collages, font
explorations, ad ideas, drawings, poetry, quotes, short stories and all manners
of randomness. Some of it made me laugh, some of it made me think, some of it
actually inspired me.
Like this gem (that I painstakingly retyped to share with
you. I deserve a cookie.)
Ten Ways To Make Smarter Ads
1.
Ask
yourself: “What’s the benefit?” Write it down. Memorize it. Live with it
for a while. Mull it over while you do other stuff. You can’t make the ad
unless you know what the benefit is. If you can’t say it clearly, you can’t
restate it in a unique way. And that’s what good ads do – they say the benefit
in a unique way.
2.
If you’re a writer, think visually. If you’re
an art director, write headlines. Neither side of the equation is
proprietary.
3.
Go watch somebody buy it. You don’t have
to go up and ask them anything. Just look at who they are, how they look.
Figure out what kind of kid they were in high school. One key to a good ad is
to approach the proposition form the customer’s point of view.
4.
Headline: “Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, dumb shit.” Every human being that ever
lived engages in a running dialogue with him or herself. Within the context of
that dialogue, the tone is candid and forthright – and virtually universal.
They don’t pull their punches. Since they (we) are familiar with it, you (we)
should use it where appropriate.
5.
If you borrowed any interest, march right
over and return it. Borrowed
interest is a crutch we’re all tempted to use. It takes something vaguely
related to the subject and tries to center the ad up over there. Like building
an ad about remembering your new area code by having an elephant dial the
phone. Borrowed interest is a creative cop out. It says “We couldn’t find any
interesting way to couch the proposition, so we gave up.”
6.
More ideas, dammit. Too many young creatives mistake
thinking real hard for thinking real well. It’s not about sitting there,
grunting and straining. If you do that, you’ll just pull a mental muscle. It’s
more about having a lot of ideas. How does the proposition look from over here?
What about up there? How would a comedian say it? How would it look upside
down? Take the benefit statement and say it/ show it as many different ways as
possible.
7.
If you can’t split it with a meat
cleaver, skewer it with whimsy. We
tend to see or accept one tone as appropriate for whatever the subject of the
ad might be. (For example: Beer is about belly laughs for guys.) Sometimes (and
it’s painfully obvious in retrospect) another tonal approach might not only be
appropriate. It might also open up whole new areas for you to explore.
8.
Never smother your partner’s baby. Creating ads in teams isn’t about “my
idea” vs “your idea.” It isn’t about voting on concepts one at a time as they
happen. It’s about fostering a mutual respect – a generosity of spirit that
lets you volley and serve and work in tandem.
9.
The middle of the night is nice. Make yourself get up out of bed and
start thinking about the proposition. Sit somewhere deathly quiet and stare at
a blank piece of paper. When you’re tempted to get up and walk around, don’t. Sit
there and stare at that paper until something happens or you crawl back to bed
a failure in total self-revulsion. And if the great idea doesn’t come, don’t
worry. It’ll probably happen in that state right before you wake up.
10.
Work on it subconsciously. There’s a little trick to teach
yourself. You can work on the proposition when you’re not working on the
proposition. You can shove it down into a deeper part of your brain and roll it
around while you’re sleeping or doing other things. It really works. I’ve
dreamed One Show Ads that way.
- Author unknown
(well, to me at least.)
