Where Do Ideas Come From?

I think a lot of people in the advertising business, especially so-called creative people, aren't taken seriously in our business and by clients, because they think a lot about creativity but not enough about business.

To be clear, creativity in advertising must be in service of a business objective. We are charged with selling stuff, or improving a brand's reputation, or imparting some brand-relevant information. Commercials, despite the power and weight of what's award-winning these days, are not "art films." Or if they are, then at least they must be "art films in service of a business objective."

Many people in our business, in a way that I truly fail to understand, don't read The Wall Street Journal. The Journal, for all its cheery neo-fascism, gives readers the information to know more than their clients know about whatever field their clients are in. Oh, and more than planners, account people, and fellow creatives too. If that's not an "unfair advantage," when you're working on a information-based brand, I don't know what is. 

(BTW, I don't believe in making brands part of culture. During the upcoming Super Bowel, we will see about 75 spots that attempt to do so. They don't seem to realize that celebrity juxtaposition and cultural appropriation cannot really be owned by one brand. By doing advertising that's extraneous to the composition or components of your brands, you're really, in essence, making work for the category rather than your client.)

In any event, I started reading The Wall Street Journal around 45 years ago. They ran ads at the time for the Journal that featured famous advertising creatives. You can see about 50 or so here on Dave Dye's treasure of a blog, "Stuff From the Loft."
Here are just a few of the people profiled in these ads. Below that a picture of people profiled I was lucky enough to work for, with or near. (I know they're all white men I've featured. That's the way it was. And we didn't know any better. We do now.)

All these ads featured a bit of copy on why the ad notable featured read the Journal. I said to myself nearly half-a-century ago, if they read the Journal, if they admire the product, I should do the same. Here are a few of those reasons why:

I'm gushing about the Journal, however, because of this article and book review on how we get ideas. The gist of it can be summed up in these sentences, especially the single sentence I've underscored: "George Newman, a cognitive scientist and professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management...draws on scientific studies, historical examples and behavioral research to argue that what we call inspiration is better understood as a set of habits and mental practices available to anyone willing to cultivate them. Creativity, in his telling, is more method than miracle."

Newman analyzes how ideas happen--the circumstances and the conditions that are "idea-phrenogenic." That is, the circumstances and the conditions conducive to having ideas and working to make them better.

In the spirit of ideas coming more from method than miracle, Newman is a fan not of isolation--but of sharing thoughts with friends and colleagues. He's a fan of submitting ideas to the scrutiny of others because their feedback often sharpens what solitary effort cannot." 

Newman also notes that new ideas are rarely "entirely new." In fact, most often innovations and "breakthroughs" grow out of previous ideas. He cites a study by systems researcher Brian Uzzi. He analyzed 18 million scientific papers and found breakthroughs happen in only 5% to 10% of them. Most "new" ideas are "a strategic mix of old with a touch of new."

He likens creativity to an archaeological dig. It's the final, most tedious stretch--the sifting and refining--that makes something of what's been dug up. The point of tedium (re-working) when most people give up is when most ideas come to life.

Maybe most interesting to me is how Newman talks about how we can use AI. He sees value at the "digging" stage. Sometimes sheer "volume matters more than initial quality." But Newman believes (and this is where the cost-cutters using AI--including the holding companies--will fail) humans are essential to the process. "They bring the judgment to recognize a fertile idea, the unique experiences to make it their own and the ability to execute it in ways machines cannot replicate."

The point in all this is simple.

Ideas come from many places.

Friends. Sparks from previous ideas. Discussions. Feedback. And mostly working, re-working, re-re-working and so on.

No matter how you analyze the genesis of the alchemy of new thoughts--there is a miraculousness to the miracle of saying something in a way no one else has ever said it before.

I once wrote a line for an IBM software ad that made Chris Wall love me, or at least tolerate me, unconditionally. I wrote "This makes the Crab Nebula look like small potatoes."

No one knows where the ability to find those miracles comes from. Somehow I think I get a lot of them from reading. Especially things no one else reads. Like The Wall Street Journal.

Dogs. And Doggedness.

Rufus II, Winston and Cuban cigar.

As someone who's spent a lifetime wrestling with the "Black Dog" of depression, I've come to admire, not despise, the malady. Through a lifetime of therapy, I've attained an understanding of how the ailment works on my brain--and my moods. Along with that understanding, I've learned how to not conquer the problem, but turn it to my advantage.

Brown had the 4th-lowest season-ERA ever, in 1906. 
Just a year before I turned 50.

Brown's Hall-of-Fame Bronze.
His performance-enhancing tonic was having his fingers cut off.

There was a Hall of Fame pitcher from over a century ago, he pitched from 1903 to 1916 primarily for the Northside Chicagoans, aka the Cubs. Brown lost a finger-and-half to a farm-machinery accident, and a subsequent fall and bad resetting left his twirling paw--his right--more than a bit mangled.

Brown learned how to turn his ailment into an advantage. His missing digits forced him to change his grip, giving his pitches a groundball-inducing topspin. His a-kilter middle finger gave his pitches a wacky unpredictability--and sent his pitches a-flutter to the confusion of opposing batsmen. His 2.06 lifetime ERA is a testament to Brown's skill and how hard it was to hit his horsehide offerings. Accordingly, Brown became one of the great attendance attractions from the earliest days of the sport.

Some years ago, when I was a younger copywriter, I would labor at coming up with the three or six headlines or TV scripts that would fulfill the requisites of most assignments. Often, having come up with those few "deliverables" I felt stymied and unable to come up with more.

I began, in my own mind, likening my stuckness with what I had labelled the "meniscus of misery," that is the downward spiral of my bouts of depression. Where gloom would lead to deeper and deeper gloom and eventually to a spell of near-paralysis.

There was a time when my brain would spin down to point F. What I've learned through the years and with the help of therapy, introspection, training and wise-friends, is how to stop my depression and turn it around when it hits point A. I never even get to B, C and no longer do I find myself F'd.

This week, I got a big assignment from a Fortune 150 brand. They're paying me the money I've asked for. In return, they're getting about ten-people's work in a week. That means I've probably did a half-year of holding company output for them in just five working days.

Here's where I can again call on my drawing above. There was a time, I'd have gotten tapped out of headlines and ideas at point A. If you train your brain, you can prolific-ize your output. You can find a new approach to bring more ideas so your hustle past points B and C finally arriving (just ahead of your deadline) at point F. F as in Fantastically Fecund.

So much of being in the idea business or even the human business is about unlocking your brain. Stimulating it to either break a deleterious pattern or behavior or to think in ways you haven't thought before. 

It's about interrupting the barriers that interfere with progress. It's finding new jokes, new angles, new words, new approaches when it feels like you're tapped out or maxed out.

I think that's what Mordecai Brown must have done. I bet when he mangled his hand he went through days or even weeks and months saying "I'm done." Somehow he learned to turn that into "I'm blessed." Or "I have something no one else has." In the elevated parlance of our era, he turned his frown upside-down.

When I was a boy I remember sitting next to my father in his 1949 Studebaker Commander that he had bought second-hand for $350. I remember driving all over our grungy Yonkers neighborhood looking for, against all odds, a parking space in a busy shopping district. Maybe it was just before Christmas and spaces were scarcer than ethics.

I don't remember all that much about my father. We were never all-that-friendly with each other, but I do remember him saying like an old Jew repeating the Sh'ma, "We're going to find a space or make one."

Back when I was four, I couldn't understand what he meant by "making a space." It seemed to violate the physical law that matter cannot be created or destroyed. How could he make a space?

Sixty-five years later, I've discovered what he meant.