The obsession with original ideas in advertising
A blog written by Pat Langton, creative director of Magnum Opus Partners, Melbourne
Deep in the last Millennium when I started out as a junior creative, the idea of an ‘original idea’ was drilled into me from day dot. I remember coming up with ideas and thinking, “No, ditch that, that’s been done before!”
Now, the concept of holding out every time for an original idea is simply, bloody stupid. Yet we as an industry are obsessed with ‘original ideas’. Just look at the comments of our industry news and you’ll see endless dismissive remarks like ‘done before’, ‘not original’ and so on.
OK. Ideas are what make the world go round, that and advertising (joking, not joking).
And love it or hate it two of the biggest companies in the world, Google and Facebook make
most of their money off advertising.
Both companies were born from great ideas, for sure, a minimalist search engine and a place where we can connect with friends all over the world. But were they truly original? Most de nitely not. Search engines that didn’t actually work very well begat Google, which did. MySpace begat facebook. In fact sometimes the best ideas are those that have been evolved ideas, not ‘original’ ideas.
Take a look back in history – ideas are what have moved us forward, from the lightbulb to cars, these are things that have completely changed the way we live. But they are often derivations of what has gone before. Utterly original ideas are actually as rare as hens’ teeth.
Let’s look at other industries and compare. Science for example is made up of intellectual heroes building on someone’s idea. They take previous studies and build on them. Expand on them. Build something fresh from what’s gone before.
The music industry endlessly samples from generations past. Recording artists take something they love and build on it. Especially hip hop; look at some of the great tracks of the last decade – most are samples from old soul music, reworked and brought up to day.
So when you consider two completely different industries with two people on two ends of the genius scale; Einstein or say Jay-z and how they built on ideas and made them better, you start to question what’s actually original?
There’s a great quote from Banksy. ‘Good artists borrow, great artists steal’. He happened to steal that quote from Steve Jobs, who happened to steal the quote from Pablo Picasso, but you get our point. Or Phillip Adams, a very original ad guy and now doyen of late night ‘brainfood’ radio.
“Be smart: steal the good stuff.” Wot he said, right there.
Nothing is truly original. Everything that we do, hear, smell and watch is a product of the ideas that we produce from life experience. Everything comes from something, including the myriad creative inputs we all have. So why is it that in advertising that there’s this arrogant perception that everything that we produce has to be original?
In advertising there’s no such thing as creative without strategy but if we’re truly about getting results for our clients then why can’t we adapt strategies that have been used and worked in the past?
OK, how we execute these strategies should be different, but it’s more about taking what people have done in the past and building on it. Not ripping it off but making it your own or making it better. After all, the greatest artists in world history studied at the feet of masters and then tried to emulate them, and then to enhance them. But graphic artists and art directors aren’t supposed to do that too? Come on.
Good work needs to be celebrated, wherever they came from. We need to stop pretending that we’re all geniuses and start focusing on what’s important, which is emphatically “making money for our clients”. We need to get our heads out of our arses and strive to make things better, and not necessarily obsess about being utterly original.
So is originality bad? Of course not. Just that it’s not as important as results. If you can be utterly original AND effective, well bully for you. But businesses adopt ideas from other businesses all the time. Those that work for those business aren’t allowed to? Who made that rule into a Commandment?
Whether that’s an old strategy that’s worked in the past, or a youtube video you’ve seen on online, if it sells product and creates pro ts and jobs and positive change, does it matter where it came from? Really?
28 Comments
http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2017/09/14/something-new-are-your-campaign-ideas-truly-original-and-does-it-even-matter
At last some common sense.
The industry’s obsession with ‘originality’ is mostly a waste of time, money and
counter-productive to a clients objectives.
Too often the search for originality is nothing more than a shield for creatives to hide behind as they defend their latest piece of ‘intuitive wankery’.
Constant improvement will forever create greater results than constant change.
It’s not just our industry – society is obsessed with ‘eureka’ moments and great leaps forward, when reality just doesn’t really work that way. You mentioned the field of Science, and it’s perfectly fitting. People want it to be these huge leaps forward in thinking, but it’s incremental advancements built from nuanced (and often boring) detail.
Original ideas etc., are great, but they’re exceedingly rare and often completely unnecessary. We shouldn’t lose sight of that and keep throwing the baby out with the bathwater as a result.
The ‘obsession’, if we should even call it that, with originality should be precisely *because* we’re interested in ‘making money for our clients’.
Original is fresh, and fresh is distinctive, and distinctive gets noticed – and remembered.
While the question of what even is truly original is a good one, we run the risk of being not only lazy but ineffective if originality is not sought after – in your first round of presentations at the very least!
Pft. I’m pretty sure I’ve read an article very similar to this before.
I agree with Luke, but I put it this way:
Original = Fresh = a highly memorable idea = an idea which means your brand can’t be confused with your competitor = less need for annoying and expensive repetition = cheaper, more effective advertising.
Often that fresh idea is a re-invention of something you saw or heard, but the way you recycle and the relevance of it to the new application is all-important.
And the better you do it, the fewer people will ever recognise the source or realise where you got it from.
That’s why it’s important to suck in information from as many diverse sources as possible, from films, comedy, art, music and a million daily observations of life. Your ability to draw insight and memorise these moments and draw on them, perhaps years later, is a key talent of the talented creative.
That gives you a vast catalogue to refer to when you sit down to ‘create’.
And if no other soul but you knows or recognises where you got the inspiration from, that’s when you can happily accept praise for creating something ‘original’.
Dear Luke
Your hypothesis –
‘Original is fresh, and fresh is distinctive, and distinctive gets noticed – and remembered’ – is incorrect.
It has no grounding in fact.
It’s simply what you want to believe.
Thanks for the feedback, “Dear Luke”. Given your anonymity I have no idea of your credentials, and as your assertion flies in the face of logic I’d appreciate a source. Got one?
Try Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for starters.
Dear Luke – Byron Sharp / EB institute ‘factually’ emphasises ‘distinctiveness’ as key to the success of brand advertising. To be distinctive surely requires an amount of originality, even if that is executional rather than conceptual. Meet Graham / 80s Ridley Scott anti smoking ad are an example of this?
I think it was Paul Arden who said a unique idea is, or mostly is, a new combination of existing things?
Dear Phil
No distinctiveness doesn’t require originality,
Structure of messaging alone can achieve distinctiveness.
But nor does distinctiveness automatically lead to success.
T
As I suspected, ‘Dear Luke/Phil’, the debate we’re having is over semantics and assumptions. I’ll continue to argue that originality is necessary for distinctiveness – as Phil Watson notes, even if this is simply executional. If you use a colour that no one else is using in order to create distinctiveness, this is by definition original: no one else is using it.
And none of us are arguing that distinctiveness is sufficient, only that it is necessary.
When did this blog become so intellectual and marketing-y?
Sure. As I understand the ‘facts’ of BS / EB i, distinctiveness alone doesn’t lead to success – you need constant reach and distribution too.
Is it not amusing how Byron Sharp suggests brands aim for ‘meaningless distinctiveness’? So at odds with agencies trying to find a new ‘truth’ or ‘insight’ where there is none. If he’s right it basically opens the door to be batshit crazy (or original!)
Dear Luke,
I disagree. This has nothing to do with semantics.
It’s a discussion about fact vs fiction.
Fact: Originality is not necessary for distinctiveness.
What’s original about WW’s advertising?
What’s original about Bunnings advertising?
Nothing – but they’re both distinctive and their
brand attribution and effectiveness are indisputable.
Do not confuse originality with distinctiveness.
To do so will only result in more self—indulgent
ineffectual advertising.
Checkmate.
I’d just like to wade in to support my colleague Pat Langton here. Bear in mind he didn’t say originality was pointless, he just argued that it shouldn’t be a shibboleth.
Imagine lying on the operating table, looking up at your cardiac surgeon. “Now listen, my friend”, he smiles down at you, “I know you came in here to get a stent inserted because tens of thousands of successful operations prove they work in the situation you find yourself in now, but in your case I’ve decided to take your heart out and replace it with an orange, because, you know, it’s a nice colour, and that would be a totally original thing to do.”
“Results. Nothing more.”
Dear Luke
I’d welcome your opinion on Stephen Yollands comment.
This is a more interesting than usual for cb
Like some here I’ve read Ebi / Sharp and others. Is there a definitive grand theory of advertising? I dunno.
In unconscious branding Douglas Praet points to the human instinct for novelty – anything to gain an advantage ( provided it’s backed with some certainty )
Novelty = originality
Luke’s probably right, and so is dear Luke. It’s semantics…
Dear Luke and Pw,
I agree with Pw, humans do have an attraction to novelty. However, that does not prove that originality is necessary in advertising. Humans are also attracted to the familiar. Familiarity provides comfort and removes barriers to ‘approach’.
Familiarity is why we all tend to wear similar clothes (look at any shot from a CB lunch), listen to similar music, decorate our homes in a similar fashion.
Too many creatives proclaim originality to be the key to successful advertising because it’s much easier to ‘be different’ than it is to take something that’s familiar
and make it your own.
Dear dear Luke.
It’s incorrect to interpret Byron Sharp as anti-originality. Putting memory structures and creative thinking on opposite sides is a false dichotomy. There’s plenty of evidence to show our attention centers and memory structures give more importance to ideas that surprise us i.e. creativity, originality or novelty. (see Georg Northoff – Unlocking the Brain). Byron Sharp has always been a very strong supporter of creative advertising.
Also, to Yolly, comparing heart surgery advertising is not a useful parallel. One is a life and death operation, the other is thousand daily messages you’re trying to ignore. It’s quite pointless to compare the two.
Luke’s probably right, and so is dear Luke. But dear Luke’s way of thinking is not only boring, uninspiring, and completely replaceable by AI – but it represents a false understanding of how brands work. It would be hard to find a truly great brand or business that doesn’t owe a majority dose of its success to real creativity. I mean that true and rare and brilliant spark of raw creativity. A dangerous idea. Executed time and time again in a thousand fresh and interesting ways. It’s easy for the machine-learning types to come along after that fact and say they understood how that all happened, but they didn’t, and they can’t. And for those looking to create tomorrow’s great businesses and brands, it would be preferable for the ‘dear Lukes’ to stay out of the room.
I’m not anti-originality. I’m simply stating that originality is not necessary to produce outstanding, effective advertising and that creative people’s obsession with originality is often counter-productive.
Obviously the obsession with originality can go too far, and creativity can veer into the fraudulent or indulgent. Of course it can. You can manage the risk, but it’s always there.
But when people like Dear Luke say originality isn’t necessary for effectiveness? I mean come on. Firstly, there is far more proof that originality and and effectiveness are connected, than to the contrary. Secondly, have you ever hired creative talent? Promoting your agency as formulaic, results-driven and pro-plagiarisation doesn’t attract top creatives.
Finally, who wants to make boring work? Clearly it’s possible to move units without creativity, it’s equally possible to have fun with alcohol, but who wants to go to that party?
Although Pat Langton is quite right to state ‘utterly original’ ideas are rare, and creativity comes from multiple influences, the fact is, the vast number of advertising campaign steal from other advertising campaigns. Not only is that lazy, it’s a disservice to clients and consumer.
What I’m saying is, it’s far better to have an industry that is too creative and occasionally over-indulgent, than an industry that has choked all imagination and innovation out of itself in order to compete with the mighty algorithms of Google and Facebook.
I’ve rather enjoyed this thread.
@Dear Luke, you may argue our debate has nothing to do with semantics, but the example of Bunnings you provide leads me to disagree.
Here’s what’s original about Bunnings’ advertising: the smart art direction that eschews standard product shots for vector artwork that bakes the brand into every frame. You might argue that the staff to camera approach is ‘unoriginal’ or that the music is derivative, but the ‘freight’ stuff so often dismissed by agencies is brilliantly, consistently, and originally handled in every ad. We’re using, I think, conflicting definitions of ‘originality’.
As for WW (Woolworths?), I’d argue their recent success has far more to do with improvements to their product than anything in their advertising – though the insight many decades back that people will be drawn to a supermarket for the freshness of their produce was an original one.
And let’s be clear: none of us, customers included, are interested in self-indulgent advertising. I’m arguing for originality, as the catalyst for distinctiveness.
You can state that something is a ‘fact’ as emphatically as you like, but that doesn’t make it one.
Completed all your banner ads for this week, have we?
Luke is correct to draw a distinction between self-indulgent or creative for creative-sake creative and relevant originality.
The better creatives instinctively eschew the latter in favour of the former.
Like the difference between pure maths and applied maths. One is esoteric, done for its own sake and the other to solve a problem.
Some of us innately understand the difference.
I suspect some on here do not, and are tying themselves up in knots over a basic inability to know the difference.
Those of us who have butted heads with a client to get a fresh or original idea approved after months of arguments, amendments, research designed to kill the idea (only to see record likeability, comprehension and predicted effectiveness scores) only to see the eventual idea produced and record consumer sales and to become the international gold standard insisted by that same previously reluctant client resulting in a campaign that runs around the world for decades – recognise this syndrome only too well.
Haha….originality in advertising?!?
Tell that to youtube, or as I like to call it “next month’s ads tube”
It happens more and more.
Because every year, the number of annuals you have to know off by heart – as a judge or clusterpride of judges – increases.
Does that make them shit ideas?