Few ground rules for adopting great ideas

In advertising (and its multifarious multimedia manifestations), agencies are constantly urged by smart clients to seek out great, Big Ideas.

The kind of communication idea that as comfortably informs a viral internet spot as a mainstream TV campaign, that works at point-of-sale as well as on a billboard on the Shaikh Zayed Road, and as seamlessly in guerilla street-marketing as in the press. Not least, such great ideas should win creative awards as well as build the client's business.

Enthused not to say under some pressure to find such ideas, how does the anxious agency, confronted by its collective blank sheet of paper and a mild migraine, go about locating these elusive beasts?

By extensive introspection and years of trial and error, our agency has developed a few ground rules, which I propose to share freely with any client or agency that may wish to adopt them. As with all guidance for better behaviour, it will not always be easy to stick to.

1. Great ideas start with great, singleminded brief.

This is one of the crucial areas where a client can help a great idea result from the days and weeks of co-operation with the agency. If any agency brief is not clear, intelligible and exciting for everyone who works on it, the resulting idea, when it reaches the consumer, will not be clear, intelligible or exciting for them either.

2. To have great ideas, you have to have lots of ideas.

What's remarkable about creative people, at their best, is the prodigal fluency and variety of the ideas they come up with. At the initial stages of development, ideas that have a chance of breaking out of the dull, conventional clutter can come from any point of the compass, offering the most unexpected routes to the solution.

3. There's nothing wrong with bad ideas.

Nothing inhibits creativity more than a negative attitude, so one should embrace even the really crap ideas. A remarkable finding we have made is that it seems to be humanly impossible to have five bad ideas on the trot.

4. To have good ideas you need to think positively.

As with children, good ideas respond to an atmosphere of encouragement and praise.

5. To have great ideas, you have to know what great ideas look like.

This maxim requires from agency and clients a familiarity with the medium that goes beyond passive, undifferentiated exposure to some of its examples. If you're buying meat for a restaurant, you should have more than an amateur's taste for the occasional steak. Clients responsible for approving advertising should learn what consumers are exposed to, by seeing such video-reels as 'Shots' (the six times a year global TV spot survey) or, better still, put aside a regular time each month to sit with the agency and critique the best advertising to be seen.

6. Great ideas don't follow fashion.

If fashion equals the conventional, a great idea will never be fashionable they're always zigging when others zag, as John Hegarty put it.

7. Great ideas are everywhere.

They are certainly not all to be found within the comfortable confines of an ad agency office. As we all like to cry, when heading off to the mall or hostelries serving adult beverages, 'If you want to learn how the lion hunts, don't go to the zoo!'

8. Great ideas need great executions.

Remember the 18-inch Stonehenge in 'Spinal Tap'? A great idea needs to be realised panache: great photography, great models, great locations, great typography, whatever it takes. A gold bracelet with diamonds isn't the same if it's made from brass and glass.

9. Clients may not recognise your great idea.

This is, sadly, the ultimate truth, and why creative people in commerce, more than anything else, require a resilient optimism that is beyond even their imagination.

- The writer is the regional creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi.