So the pic above is of a sunset I experienced in Sydney last week.
Beautiful isn’t it.
Sure the skyline adds to it – plus I was back in my old town and eating a nice dinner with some dear friends when I saw it – however the overall impact is conversation stopping.
The reason I mention this is that when I was judging the awards last week, I was quite disappointed at how many of the submitted “ideas” were nothing more than exercises in un-natural excessiveness.
Seriously, Michael Bay and KISS couldn’t have gone more over-the-top than some of the entries.
The thing that bothered me was that if you stripped back some of the executions, there were some glorious ideas just screaming to be let out … but no … in an attempt to be seen as “creative”, some agency folk had felt compelled to smother them in layers of sponsored jokes and/or overly complex story lines to probably justify their creative creds to their peers or to themselves.
Depressing huh?
I’ve often said adland needs to stop looking at other agencies as their competitors and look at companies like Apple and Google, but despite those 2 organisations consistently producing more widely adopted – and arguably more creative – ideas than the whole of adland combined, too many agency folk feel a 30″ piece of contrived storyline is the pinnacle of creativity.
Thank god not everyone is like that.
The best idea of the whole awards – one that I was very proud and happy to learn came from my mentor’s agency, Happy Soldiers – was for a pillow company.
Yes, a pillow company.
Let’s be honest, pillows aren’t exactly top-of-mindand because of that, people don’t change them nearly as often as they should or as they could.
There’s a bunch of reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that once a pillow case goes on, any concerns about how old it might be, goes off.
This is where Happy Soldiers come in.
Instead of doing ads that feature scare tactics, they came up with the idea of getting their client to print a “Best Change By Date” on each and every pillow.
That’s it.
How fucking brilliant is that?!
Suddenly people would know exactly when they have to change their pillow because it’s in their face.
Not only that, but because this pillow company is – for now – the only one that offers this service, customers are more likely to buy another one from them than any other competitor.
In short – and as I banged on about last week – instead of going straight to an ad, Happy Soldiers came up with an idea that actually solved the problem and then did advertising to amplify it to the masses.
Advertising that truly works.
The thing is, this idea – from a client perspective – had major implications.
Not only did it mean they had to change the manufacturing process to enable them to print dates on each pillow, they also had to re-look at how they manage their inventory … however because the idea was built on creating genuine and decisive action [ie: a real insight] the client happily took on all the challenges and is now sitting back, watching their business enjoy double-digit growth.
And here’s the ‘moral’ to the story.
A great idea is a bit like a sunset: effortless, simple, beautiful and captivating …
It is something that will make people stop in amazement … it will make clients take on internal challenges … it will get people spreading the word … which is why if you are coming up with stuff that takes 10 minutes or more to explain – or worse, just talks about a storyline rather than addresses the real issue – then ultimately all you’re dealing in is confusion and you have no one else to blame other than yourself.