Ideas or Concepts

In our industry (advertising) we are focused on creativity as a powerful tool to solve clients briefs. Very often I hear the point of view that creativity is linked to the ideas that we generate at the agencies. We have even organized our agencies according to this thinking. The account people receive the brief, they do the strategy work alone or with planners and then it's handed over to the creative - the idea guys (typically an Art Director and a Copy Writer). From one department to another.

We are currently working hard to change this thinking and proces at Advance. So far the old structure has generated great stuff, but things are changing and so are we. To me Hyper Island truly proved that ideas can and should come from many sources. Different perspectives and different experiences add to the richness of ideas. And facilitated the right way it leads to more and even better ideas. A second advantage is the combination of people with a deep understanding and knowledge of the clients business and people with little or no knowledge. And if you are able to establish a positive culture (more YES than NO) around the proces you are on to something.

Cool ideas from a Triobike workshop

By working this way we are almost "democratizing" part of the creative work. Right now Advance is also experimenting with ways to include the clients in this ideation work. To create ownership and trust.

To me it represents a paradigme in our way of working. And to some a bit scaring. If it's "just" about more or less open source ideation, how can the agencies create value in the future? First of all I think it's all about becoming great at facilitating this proces (we are developing our own tools based on the experiences we gather) and secondly the true creative power in my mind will be in the way you put the ideas together and make them into Concepts that will solve the clients true problems. Concepts that can be communication, products or business related or a combination of all three. And a tiny insight from my work as an Expert Judge at the Commercial Court in Denmark: You can not legally protect an idea, but you can get legal protection of Concepts.

It's not a walk in the park to work in a paradigme shift and it requires new processes, new organizational structures and new ways of engaging clients. All of this we are trying at Advance. With a BETA mentality to it.