Everybody SAYS, “I love breakthrough creative.”

Recently a colleague of mine referred to Hollywood as “the place where creativity goes to die.”  I think that any art director or copywriter who has sat through a particularly brutal creative review would say that there are times when this criticism can be leveled at all forms of advertising, as well.

 I have come to believe that everyone loves breakthrough ideas after they have been proven to work, but very few people either recognize them – or have the stomach for their risk – to appreciate them when they first make their appearance.

 Over and over again, I have sat in creative reviews that began with an individual praising some great advertising he or she just saw, only to have that person choose the safest concept presented.

 Or people will come in demanding “cutting edge” advertising, which simply means that they want something almost exactly like an edgy ad they saw in Vanity Fair last month instead of something truly original.

 It can be very frustrating.

 Back in the days when I was a young copywriter, I was challenged to come up with some breakthrough creative for a direct mail solicitation of a mutual fund. It seemed that creative after creative failed to pull more than a dismal .25% – and that was for an invitation to inquire.

 I went back to my office and examined previous packages. They all touted the benefits, of safety, consistency, and high yields.  I got bored. Sure if I was investing in a mutual fund, I’d want all those things. But so what? What did it really mean to me?

 That’s when it hit me – all the “benefits” we were selling were merely features. The real benefit of investing is making money.  What’s the point of investing to make money? Getting to spend it, that’s what!

 So I wrote a package that concentrated on what you could do with the money you earned with your safe, consistent, high yield investment. You could send your kids to college…retire in comfort…visit Hawaii…buy a vacation home.

 I walked into the creative review and I was savaged. When I fought back and pointed out the wisdom of my approach, my own creative director told me…

 “If your idea was any good, someone would have already thought of it!”

 So much for the concept of originality.

 As for cutting edge, one of my former clients is a big player in commercial playground equipment. They wanted to revolutionize their advertising because smaller competitors were gaining on them

 “Give me cutting edge!” the owner insisted.  “We need something totally original,” the marketing director cried.  They didn’t stop there.  “Here, make an ad out of this,” they said, and handed me a story about how they miraculously put up a playground at a school that had been under water due to flooding a few short weeks before.

 Our ad featured the road sign for a school crossing peaking halfway out of a flooded river and had a headline that read, “Can you imagine children playing here? We can.”

 They hated it.

 “Where’s the photo of the new playground?” they cried. “You can’t sell playground equipment without showing a playground!”

 I tried to explain that the ad sold both the company’s expertise, and ability to react fast in a crisis, as well as the quality of their product – all the things that set them apart from the competition.  I also pointed out that this ad was designed to stand out in a sea of ads all dominated by big color photos of playground equipment.

 Naturally, I lost.  “That’s not what we mean by cutting edge,” I was told.

 I am sure that everyone reading this blog can provide me with their own horror stories. But the question I want to ask is how do we avoid having good ideas – ideas that may even be ground-breaking – destroyed at the concept stage?

 I think we do it with a careful plan of attack that prepares the way for the idea, and helps to deflate the circular logic that often derails it … and I’ll talk about my ideas – and yours – in my next blog.

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