Comments on: // Never Fall in Love (With an Idea)

By: not_so_madman

not_so_madman — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 01:45:18 +0000

Great creative debates can create great work – it can also create “Mulligan Stew” when weak ideas are stirred into what was a great idea. Take the “Think Smalll” Volkswagen campaign by Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1959 (ok, most of you will need to Google it). The Creative director who presented it must have had sweaty palms showing the client a full-page newspaper ad with only a very small picture of the car at the bottom of a full-page ad. Ad Legend Hal Riney once did a remake of the ad after their client “might” have made changes – adding American flags to offset the negative connotation of a German car (in 1959), then adding a Country Club in the background to class it up, making the car larger to dominate the lower half of the page, greatly enlarging the logo, etc.
Bottom line, make the changes and add the additions to improve the ad, not to satisy a whiney ego.

By: jphodgins

jphodgins — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:13:14 +0000

I've come up with a system. If I have a really good idea, I wait a while to let some other ideas circulate. Then I throw mine out. I found that if an idea is brought up early, even if it's the best, the group wants to discuss for more time. It may be cheating, but sometimes I'm ok with that.

By: Jim Mitchem

Jim Mitchem — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:10:14 +0000

Spot on. The best advice I received early on in my advertising career was don't marry your ideas. That said, most of my ideas *are* always the best ones, but I let other people try to come to that decision on their own.