How to Create an Idea If You Are Not Ogilvy

Content

How this book was born

The patient idea-hunters

Chapter 1. The tool borrowed from physics

Chapter 2. Divide et impera

Chapter 3. Chasing after defeats

Chapter 4. Let it storm

Chapter 5. The Queen of the advertising kingdom

Chapter 6. Violate the symmetry on purpose

Chapter 7. Hidden reserves of the adman

Chapter 8. The favorite tool of the art director

Where do ideas really hide?

Secret gift to the reader

About the author

Endorsements

Copyright

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

“I do not wish to deceive you; you must know the

truth as I know it; may you enter into this truth not

through agonizing error and crushing disappoint-

ment, but simply as an inheritance.”

Alexander Herzen to his son Alexander

How this book was born

People collect basically everything. Beer lovers hunt after beer labels and bottle caps. Phalerists search after medals, badges, military awards. Memomagnetics—fridge magnets. Notaphilists—rare banknotes. Arenophiles—sand from beaches. Sucrologists—packets of sugar from restaurants and coffee shops.

Buttons and transport tickets, rubber ducks and teddy bears, countries visited and unusual names of ladies conquered—everything can be collected.

The author of the following lines also shares this collecting passion. I am the collector of ideas. For many years I’ve collected ads, videos, leaflets, and posters which drew attention to themselves, surprised me and led to the purchase of a product.

People collect buttons and transport tickets, rubber ducks and teddy bears, countries visited and unusual names of ladies conquered.

Every good idea brought me great joy, for it helped me in my work each time. Each new idea became a tool to help solve a whole range of creative tasks. It turned into my personal competitive advantage that has always been at hand.

Hunting for ideas, for ways to complete or expand this collection has always seemed to me much more fascinating than the collecting of coins or postcards. I think that we should be collecting not things physically but their essence, their basis, their concepts and ideas.

In the 1930s in the United States a man was condemned for the murder of his colleague, a philatelist. The judge asked what the motive for the crime was. The puzzled defendant replied: “But, Your Honor, he refused to sell the post stamp, which was missing from my collection...”

Picking up ideas is beneficial in terms of security as well. And, the truth of the matter is that sharing ideas can make each of us richer. In the words of the absurdly talented George Bernard Shaw, if you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

By the way, do you know what to exchange so that both parties of the transaction have nothing to share afterwards? Try to exchange secrets ...

Over 100,000 advertising materials have passed through my consciousness up to current day. I’ve saved the best of them in my personal archives. Through the years, this collecting became true scientific research.

I am the collector of advertising ideas.

There are about 5,000 advertising samples in my collection. They differ from the ordinary mass of commercial production by the power and sharpness of impact on the viewer. Usually, they also differ in sales results, though not everyone has consistently shared their financial results from their advertising campaigns.

Analysis of the collection led to a surprising discovery.

The exact numbers of products, market niches, and target audiences were incalculable. But the number of creative techniques that were used to create sales materials was very small. There are around a couple of dozen.

Even among these twenty techniques there were only eight that were used most frequently. These are the tools we are going to discuss in this book. This set of creative tools will always be helpful for you to find a strong solution, even if you believe that there is not a single drop of creative blood in your veins.

Money today devalues rapidly, but the promotional approaches that you will learn in this book and, most importantly, the ideas that will be created in your own head after reading, will only keep growing in value. Therefore, by investing very little you get much in return—the golden rule of Mister Business.

If the number of unexpected thoughts and bright ideas in the world grow, everybody wins. The creative success of any one of us will make our common noosphere—the sphere of human thought—larger, stronger and more robust.

The patient idea-hunters

“Any cat that misses a mouse

pretends it was aiming for

the dead leaf.”

Charlotte Gray,

Canadian historian and author

Is it easy to find the idea in general, and the advertising idea in particular?

The history of ice cream has more than 4,000 years, but the first wafer cone was offered to a sweet tooth only at the end of the 19th century.

Meat has been consumed by primitive people since before they learned how to write their own history, even in pictures. Bread baking started during the Stone Age, but the first sandwich wasn’t prepared until 1762.

Years, decades, centuries pass by before somebody comes up with this or that idea.

Glasses and lenses were used for 300 years before the invention of the telescope. What is this optical instrument? Just a simple combination of two lenses. A hollow tube and two pieces of glass—that’s all! But for many hundreds of years no one had guessed to take a lens and look at it through the other lens!

There are millions of other similar examples.

Years, decades, centuries pass by before somebody comes up with this or that idea. Great inventors have to sort out thousands of options before coming to the right solution.

Thomas Edison had failed 2,000 experiments before he succeeded in improving a light bulb filament.

In order to invent the alkaline battery, he had to perform some 50,000 attempts. Edison himself was optimistic and didn’t consider these attempts as a failure, but rather as discovering 50,000 ways that wouldn’t work.

Companies, agencies, people waste enormous intellectual and time resources.

It is sad, but in the 21st century, people keep doing the same. They sort through countless variations before they find the right one. The main way to create new ideas is still the great-grandfather’s method of trial and error.

Several years ago, one Russian nationwide newspaper asked its young readers: “Which methods of solving creative problems do you know?” Here is what a seventh-grader from Bashkiria answered: “The method of solving a creative problem is a man sitting with a thoughtful face, looking at the ceiling and scratching his forehead”. I would not say that this picture differs from the real situation even at quite serious and respected companies.

Advertising is a business of ideas.

Every day creative agencies are committed to coming up with many concepts for clients. How does it happen in practice? Take a look at the graphic record of the process of finding a solution at one of the advertising boutiques (see Fig. 1.).

Drawn by Juriy Gerasimov

Fig. 1. How the ideas of the adman work in the 21st century.

As you see, the same good old trial-and-error method is the queen of the ball. However, sometimes brainstorming1 is used as one of its variations.

It is extremely inefficient. Companies, agencies, people waste enormous intellectual and time resources. Here is the working process of an ad team described by a person who knows about it firsthand.

As an employee in an agency creative department, you will spend most of your time with your feet up on a desk working on an ad. Across the desk, also with his feet up, will be your partner—in my case, an art director. And he will want to talk about something like… movies. In fact, talking frankly, you will spend a large part of your career with your feet up talking about movies.

The ad is due in two days. The media space has been bought and paid for. The pressure’s growing. And, meanwhile, your muse is sleeping off like a drunk behind a dumpster or twitching in a ditch somewhere. Your pen lies useless.

That’s when the traffic person comes by. They’ll come by to remind you of the horrid things that usually happen to snail-assed creative people who don’t come through with the goods on time.

So you try to get your pen moving. And you begin to work. And working, in this business, means staring at your partner’s shoes. That’s what I’ve been doing from nine to five for over 20 years. Staring at the bottom of the disgusting tennis shoes on the feet of my partner, parked on the desk across from my disgusting tennis shoes. This is the sum and substance of life at an agency. 2

In this book we will consider an alternative approach to the search for innovative ideas in advertising. Here, perhaps for the first time in epochs of advertising history there appear creative techniques that allow you to get a strong solution without sorting multiple options. These methods are discussed in detail and are analyzed and combined into a system.

The same good old trial-and-error method is the queen of the ball in the advertising industry.

Knowledge and skillful use of these techniques will dramatically increase the creative potential of people working in design and advertising. At the same time, those psychological barriers that hinder finding sharp advertising solutions are discussed and analyzed.

Chapter 1

The tool borrowed from physics

“Two things are infinite: the

universe and human stupidity;

and I am not sure about

the universe.”

Albert Einstein,

Theoretical physicist

Once, travelling on a train, I met a young man who supplied the equipment for medical institutions of the Karelia region of Russia. We had a chat. When he heard that I was creating ideas for advertising, he asked if there are special technologies in our profession.

My answer was: “If the advertiser did their homework conscientiously and studied deeply the product or service, the creative ideas show up by themselves”.

He was delighted with these words. He had attended various training sessions many times and so many times he’d heard from western and domestic gurus the profound maxim: “Be creative!” But no one had ever at least tried to explain how to be creative. It turns out that it’s simple. It is necessary to explore the advertised product inside out.

This is simple but not easy. Every day you need to gather information, pick up interesting facts, and search for numbers. It is hard, tedious, painstaking work.

But when I answered the question of my fellow traveler, I did not say everything. Special creative techniques do exist, and ad people use them.

The Polish physicist Leopold Infeld in his autobiographical writings mentions the problem that the young Peter Kapitsa once suggested to him and Lev Landau. With a serious face Kapitsa, who worked at that time in Cambridge with Rutherford, voiced this problem:

“A tin can is tied to the tail of the dog. When the dog runs, the can keeps knocking on the pavement. Question: how fast should the dog run to avoid hearing the noise of the can?”

Infeld and Landau thought for a long time.

“Do you give up?” Kapitsa asked.

“We do” the physicists admitted reluctantly.

The other scientist looked at them with a smile and gave the answer: “The speed is zero.”

What complicates the solution of such a simple task?

In the case about the dog’s tail, the speed is mentioned in its conditions. In our mind, speed is inextricably linked with movement.

In this problem, we unintentionally consider only the options that imply movement. Of course, even children are aware that a speed may be equal to zero. But it is not typical. We are so used to this idea of speed meaning movement that we veer far away from the correct answer.

That is why, in the physical sciences, an efficient and powerful method is often used. That is: go to the consideration of the limiting case3. The same method can be successfully applied in advertising.

Let’s imagine that we need to advertise a super-fast sports car. It is late autumn. A janitor rakes fallen leaves into a huge pile. A car moves nearby. What happens next? Air currents predictably raise the leaves into the air and scatter them in different directions.

The faster the sports car moves, the sooner leaves scatter and the less time we will witness the racing car in the frame. What happens in an extreme case?

Here is a nice script of the TV commercial.

The same original image. A janitor’s broom gathers a pile of yellow and red maple leaves. We hear the sound of an approaching car. It grows. We hear the roar of a powerful engine. Leaves are winged by a powerful air stream and begin a slow waltz around the roadside trees and shrubs. Because of the diminishing sound, we know that the car has rapidly moved away.

We did not have to see it.

The logo of the advertised brand and the slogan “The incredibly fast car” appears in the final frame of the spot.

In the physical sciences, an efficient and powerful method is often used. That is: go to the consideration of the limiting case. The same method can be successfully applied in advertising.

In print ads, transition to the limit is used even more often. In the next example we face the task of promoting laundry detergent that washes away any kind of dirt. What is the easiest way to detect dirty spots? On white clothes. What associates closest of all with the color white? Let’s take fresh snow. In an ideal case, dazzling clean white linen should not be visible at all on snow.

Perfect. We came to the limit. But with one problem still unsolved. The viewer had to learn somehow that something was there on the snow. What could we do?

Let’s use identification signs. Like leaves and noises in the car commercial. Here’s how it might look in a silent printed version (see Fig. 1.1.).

With kind permission of P&G and Leo Burnett Warsaw, Poland

Fig. 1.1. Print advertising of the washing powder which leaves no chances for contamination.

Rope, clothespins and shadows are our helpers in delivering the advertising message. They put all the elements of the initial idea in their own places. The layout looks very unusual, doesn’t it?

The perfect product is when the product is absent, but its function nevertheless is performed.

Identification signs may be different. For example, Russian pancakes with caviar or Japanese rolls with salmon on plates that merge with a snow-white tablecloth (see Figs. 1.2., 1.3.). Our imagination is turned on at full power and completes the missing boundaries. As a result, we get advertising of dishwasher tablets, which will give your dishes a perfect, unsurpassed cleanliness.

Fig. 1.2. Invisible plate.

With kind permission of BBDO Moscow, Russia

Fig. 1.3. The transition to the limit in the ad for dishwasher detergent.

Very often when you think about advertising ideas it is useful to imagine what a perfect product would look like. Let us ask ourselves: “What can be called the perfect product?” Borrow the answer from TIPS4. The perfect product is when the product is absent, but its function nevertheless is performed.

The ideal product is supposed to be obviously much better than any other products. It costs nothing. It is absolutely reliable in operation. It doesn’t cause any harmful side effects. It does not require any technical support, after-sales service, warranty etc.

Here is an interesting example from history.

During the siege of the city the commander of the papal army Cesare Borgia appealed to Leonardo da Vinci with the request to build a tower which would allow his army to overcome the fortress wall which was 10 meters high.

A siege tower is a large wooden structure, usually rectangular on the ground. Its height should match the height of the wall of the fortress to give an opportunity for archers to shoot from its upper area.

Wood was used as a material for the construction of the tower. It was covered by non-combustible materials to protect it from fire. Usually freshly picked animal skins were used for these purposes. The tower can move on four wheels when hand dragged or pulled by cattle, and the storm team gets quick access to the city wall.

Before the start of construction of the tower, da Vinci advised as soon as possible to spread the rumor that his tower will be as high as 12 meters.

The idea appeared to be simple, as every brilliant idea is. Once besieged people learned about the construction of a taller siege tower, they hastily began to build their walls higher as well. Their foundation could not sustain the additional load, and it only took a few shots to make the walls collapse.

The tower Leonardo suggested did not have to be built at all.

As you can see, we have the perfect tower. It was absent, cost nothing, but it performed its function perfectly!

If you ever happen to visit the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow, take a look at one of its exhibits—an electric candle of Yablochkov. It was first demonstrated as a form of street and theater lighting in 1878 at the World Exhibition in Paris.

This invention was met by the world press with words “Russian Light”, and “Light comes from the Russia”. But Pavel Yablochkov was not the first who proposed to use an electric arc light. Electric candles were invented a bit earlier. But their light was unstable and capricious.

Near each candle, a man was needed to manually shift the horizontally arranged carbon rods as they burnt out. If the distance between the electrodes was bigger than a permissible minimum, the light became uneven, the lamp started blinking and, naturally, died out.

A device that would automatically shift the electrodes was required. And such a device was invented. It was controlled by a clock mechanism. It was quite ingenious, but it had one major drawback: the unit was still fragile.

What was the suggestion of the Russian engineer?

Perfect control is the absent one, yet its function is performed. Yablochkov changed only the geometry of candles. He placed carbon rods not horizontally but vertically. This made the gap between the rods remain constant, along the entire length.

The space between the rods was filled with melting ceramic material to save the voltaic arc from sliding down. Is it simple? Not really. It took more than 30 years to create an ideal mechanism for the convergence of electrodes.

Now let’s get back to advertising.

One day a manufacturer of modular inter-floor stairs came to our agency. The king’s share of the market was occupied by his competitors with their wooden stairs. The basic and fundamental weak side of this product is an annoying creaking sound which inevitably arises when the steps and rails are loosened, and the wood is cracked from drying out.

We decided to attack this “weak point of the enemy.” But how to show the absence of a creak visually? All we had at our disposal was a picture of the stairs and perhaps the image of a man or animal who goes upstairs (see Fig. 1.4.).

Fig. 1.4. The key visual for promotion of silent stairs.

What is the ideal product in this case? The staircase which is absent but yet the opportunity to rise to the upper level is still provided. We divided the sheet of paper into two parts. On the left one we depicted a dog walking up the stairs. The subtitle at the bottom said: “It’s how our staircase looks”.

On the right one was the same picture but without stairs. It turned out that the Rottweiler was flying in the air. The headline was: “It’s how our staircase sounds” (see Fig. 1.5.). This idea increased sales silently for more than six years.

With kind permission of MasterUm, Moscow, Russia

Fig. 1.5. The silence instead of creak. Our noiseless staircases neither squeak, nor complain.

By the way, the creators of the historical-revolutionary film Mother had to solve an even more sophisticated creative problem back in 1926. What would you do in order to show silence in the silent movie? The film director Vsevolod Pudovkin found the amazing solution.

In the frame he showed how drops of water from the washstand were falling slowly and rhythmically. One was falling after another. One kept falling after another. In reality, the sound of the drops can be heard only when all sounds around are frozen. It was one of the best episodes in the movie.

Let’s go on. Suppose that we advertise a super-reliable door lock. What is the ideal product in this case? There is no lock at all, but it is absolutely impossible to get inside the house. Because the door is no different from the brick wall (see Fig. 1.6.).

With kind permission of Guthan Suthiphongchai and Weerawat Weerawatanakorn

(Lowe Bangkok, Thailand)

Fig. 1.6. Transition to the limit leaves no room for shy thinking.

How to introduce wireless services? Once again let’s return to the sight of the ideal product. There are no wires, but they honestly and rigorously implement their “function” (see Fig. 1.7.).

The idea of DDB Mudra Group, Mumbai, India, redrawn by Juriy Gerasimov

Fig. 1.7. Perfect electric wires are absent but fulfill faithfully their function.

As you can see, strong creative solutions may not be in adding something to a picture, an idea or product, but in the opposite approach. The disappearance of the familiar and the expected object attracts our attention, captivates, fascinates the viewer (see Fig. 1.8.).

With kind permission of Annie Chiu and Anna Echiverri, New York, the United States

Fig. 1.8. Guerilla advertising of sports shoes.

Try to subtract an important part. The one that used to be considered a significant and indispensable thing. Perhaps a wonderful discovery awaits you there. Much more often than it is generally thought, creativity is about reduction, subtraction, the abandonment of superfluous and unnecessary parts.

Much more often than it is generally thought, creativity is about reduction, subtraction, the abandonment of superfluous and unnecessary parts.

Take a look at the next image (see Fig. 1.9.).

Do you know what it is?

An annual meeting of single, good looking, straight, emotionally-stable, financially-secure, intelligent men looking for a long-term commitment.

Drawn by Juriy Gerasimov

Fig. 1.9. The ideal man has just one shortcoming—he doesn’t exist.

Many years ago, this picture became the trigger for me that shot out with the idea of a TV commercial for the Coca-Cola company. Here is its script. It’s early morning. The sea. Sandy beach. We hear the cries of seagulls and the sound of waves. Opened red umbrella branded with white logo of the famous drink.

We watch the picture from the height of bird flight.

The first guest comes under the umbrella and orders a glass of fizzy drink. Of course, we do not see him from the top but it is easy to guess what is happening. The second man is coming to the shed from another side. Then a couple of teenagers arrive from the third direction.

Try to subtract an important part. The one that used to be considered a significant and indispensable thing. Perhaps a wonderful discovery awaits you there.

The sun rises higher. We can realize this by noticing the rapidly diminishing shadow cast by the umbrella. The air temperature is clearly rising. The beach is becoming more and more crowded. The number of those who come under the umbrella from different directions to cool off during a hot, summer day multiplies dramatically.

It’s nothing special, is it?

Now imagine that the situation described happens, but people are not displayed. Instead, we draw the feet traces left in the sand (see Fig. 1.10.).

The idea of MasterUm, Moscow, Russia, drawn by Juriy Gerasimov

Fig. 1.10. The final shot of the author’s TV commercial for the world’s largest beverage company.

We see only the branded umbrella under which only the path of the traces of bare feet. Then there is another path. Then two more footprints appear on the sand surface. The action goes on until the moment when the whole area around the tent becomes covered by traces of human feet.

Chapter 2

Divide et impera

“An elephant consists of a trunk, ears and a hippo.”

Life observation

In 1936 one Parisian atelier—a fancy workshop—mailed templates of fashionable hats in its shop to Athens. The manager of the atelier feared (not without a reason) that their competitors would copy templates at the very period of the delivery. How to protect the patterns from copying?

Here is another situation. Just recently one of our bank clients wanted to advertise loans to individuals secured by the cost of client’s personal car (logbook loans). The main benefit of this proposal was that the client continued to use his car after the loan. The car did not need to be left at the disposal of the bank, as is usually required.

All we had in our agency was a picture of the car. It could be easily bought in any photo stock. We had no money for the complex staged shooting. How to deliver the main advantage of the bank in the format of print layout?

How to prevent competitors from copying the patterns of fashionable hats on their delivery route from Paris to Athens?

Let me tell you the third situation. After production moved to factories in Thailand and Taiwan, the world-renowned corporation Reebok faced a serious problem. Some local workers were not the best example of honest and decent people in the world. They not only stole shoes directly from the factories, but also some of them established a delivery channel directly to the US market at rock bottom prices!

Punitive measures didn’t have any effect. Mass theft in factories went on and on. The company carried significant losses. How to overcome the major inclining to the theft of Reebok company’s local staff?

Now to answers and solutions, which are the most interesting part. I’ll start with the banking problem since the process of searching for advertising ideas has passed before my eyes. We came up with 24 options. Each of them carried the right message to the consumer with more-or-less acceptable degrees of expression.

But all options demanded studio shooting and unfortunately none of them was sharp or to-the-point. Every time, something appeared to be missing. Or on the contrary the idea was too difficult to understand on the spot.

We felt the creative block. At some point it became clear that within the single image there was no solution. But if we split the layout it would produce a graceful and almost mathematically tuned solution.

It was enough to show two pictures of the same car. Before receiving the loan and after getting the loan there were absolutely no changes (see Fig. 2.1.). That was the promise that we had to deliver.

With kind permission of MasterUm, Moscow, Russia

Fig. 2.1. Advertising solutions which you cannot get with just one image.

What did they come up with at Reebok? It was the very simple and elegant way out which reduced the “value” of theft to zero. Production was divided: Taiwan began to produce shoes only for the left foot. Thailand produced shoes just for the right foot. Shoes were put together for sale only once they arrived in the United States. Thus, theft at the local factories was eradicated completely.

How did Reebok solve the problem of mass theft in its factories in Thailand and Taiwan?

Reebok as before enjoyed a high price for the dealers. The top management of the corporation could sleep peacefully and not be afraid of market dumping. Actually, the same technique, though in microscopic scale, is used in many shoe shops when they put just one shoe from each pair in the showrooms.

Should I tell you the decision the hostess of the Parisian atelier came up with? I hope that now you can easily formulate it yourself. I will not deprive you of this innocent pleasure.

In my personal collection there are dozens of real-life problems of many different areas—from medicine to nuclear physics—that can be solved in a similar manner. But no doubt you have caught the basic idea.

It is a very strong creative tool to divide into pieces what we perceive as an indivisible unit. Have a look at the next layout (see Fig. 2.2.).

With kind permission of TBWA, Bangkok, Thailand

Fig. 2.2. Stain remover erases impurities at the moment they appear.

In the stain remover advertising, the stain of spilt coffee is divided from the sofa—it is literally peeling off. In a similar way, we can show the separation of the stain, for example, of melted ice cream from the back seat of the car. Or the stain of the ink could be divided from the carpet. And so on. These separations are performed quickly and easily. That is exactly what happens if you use the advertised product.