Before putting pen to paper:
o Start by examining the current positioning of your project.
o Get to know your clients
o On the other, stay stupid.
o Get to know your client’s customers as well as you can.
o Ask to see the entire file on the client’s previous advertising.
o Insist on a tight strategy.
o Final strategy should be simple.
o Make sure what you have to say matters.
o Testing strategy is better than testing executions.
o Go to the focus group.
o Read the publications your ads will be in.
o Read the awards books.
o Look at your competitors advertising.
Idea generation.
Solve our problem and the clients. Strategy and execution.
Pose the problem as a question
Don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions
Ask yourself what would make you buy the product
Find the central truth about your product
Try the competitor’s product
Dramatize the benefit
Avoid style; focus on substance
Make the claim in your ad something that is incontestable
First, say it straight. Then say it great. “This is an ad about…”
Restate the strategy and put some spin on it.
What’s the old you want your reader or viewer to feel?
Allow yourself to come up with terrible ideas.
Allow your partner to come up with terrible ideas.
Feed a baby idea lots of milk and burp it regularly.
Share our ideas with your partner; even the dumb half formed ones.
Spend some time away from your partner, thinking on your own.
Let your subconscious mind do it.
Try writing down words from the products category
Stare at a picture that has the emotion of the ad you want to do
Do I want to write a letter or send a postcard?
Find a villain
Tell the truth and run. “Were avis. Were only number two. So we try harder”
Does the medium lend itself to your message?
Be proactive
Coax an interesting visual out of your product
Get the visual clichés out of your system right away.
Show, don’t tell.
Saying isn’t the same as being.
When everybody zigs, zag
Don’t be different just to be different.
Consider the opposite of your product
Avoid the formula of saying one thing and showing another. Only if it’s not good.
Move back and forth between wide-open blue-sky thinking and critical analysis
See if you can avoid doing the old ‘exaggeration’ thing.
Interpret the problem using different mental processes.
Look at the product in a total different angle. Shake your heads etch-a sketch
Metaphors must’ve been invented for advertising.
Wit invites participation
Don’t set out to be funny. Set out to be interesting.
Try not to look like an ad. Try not to sound like and ad.
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.
Simple is hard to miss, its bigger. It’s easy to remember. It breaks from the rest
Keep paring away until you have the essence of your ad
Billboards force you to be simple. (Exercise if it doesn’t work here…)
Outdoor is a great place to get outrageous
Big ideas transcend strategy. Atom bomb doesn’t have to land on target to work.
When you’ve exhausted every angle. Look at your best ones.
