How to have good ideas
The original 5-step genius
You can’t turn your computer on these days without being showered with content promoting the 7 best these, or the 9 smartest those – there’s a belief that in terms of ‘getting traction’ the way it is packaged and presented is paramount.
Even the number of things in your topical list (keep the number odd, that’s a good trick) is seen as significant. That will get you noticed!!
Which is fine, but only if the ‘it’ (the idea) holds some merit. Content for content’s sake is the bane of marketing – as if being seen to be doing something is what it’s all about.
No. Whether you recognise it or not, the message is still king.
Moreover we’re routinely informed that the most modern ways of doing things (digital – yawn) are inherently the best ways of doing things. Which is logical if you assume that everyone has learnt from past experiences/knowledge and cumulatively builds on the tried-and-tested. Hmm. If only.
Well try this for size:
THE 5-STEP PROCESS FOR IDEA GENERATION
- You gather as much information on the problem as you can. You read, you underline stuff, you ask questions, you visit the factory
- You sit down and actively attack the problem
- You drop the whole thing and go do something else while your subconscious mind works on the problem
- ‘Eureka!!!’
- You figure out how to implement your idea It nice isn’t it?
It has a beautiful logic to it, and you can see the absolute merit in this process. What a sensible thing to do! Excellent, rational, modern thinking. Except it isn’t. It was written by a copywriter (and future inaugural Chairman of The Advertising Council in the USA), Mr James Webb YOUNG…in 1940.
And what is worse is that in modern marketing, where everything has to be done and arrive at the speed of sound to be of value*, you’d be forgiven for thinking that only stages 2 and 4 are relevant (and 5 has already been decided – digital) What on Earth would Mr Young be saying to us now??
*It doesn’t.