Ideas come first, where they live comes second.

Something that has troubled me throughout my commercial creative career is the number of people, both agency and client side, who think that an execution or a media platform is an idea.

Ideas are ideas. Executions are executions. Media is media.

It's really quite simple this business of ours, in principle, so it amazes me when people still can't figure it out.

Step 1: A brand needs to communicate with an existing or new audience or both. To do this the creative agency will need to know a few things - Who exactly is that audience? What do they like and do? How do they think? What do they buy? What don't they buy? What do they watch and listen to? What do they read? Where do they live? How much do they earn? Where do they get their entertainment from? What do they spend their hard earned money on? There are many more questions that can be asked upfront and to be honest the more the better.

This upfront research is invaluable. It creates the roadmap for thinking. And this is the only place you should be doing your research as you cannot research an idea. Yes, that's right, you cannot research an idea. It is a waste of a brand's time and money. But that in itself is a whole other post for me to write.

To be a great creative who can create relevant ideas you also, in my opinion, need to be a great strategist. You need to gather all the information and insights you can to ensure your ideas hit the mark like William Tell's arrow in an apple.

Step 2: Refine all of the above information and distill it into a cohesive brief. But a brief made for today not a brief that was relevant yesterday. So many agencies still work to briefs that are no different to those used in the 90's, 80's, or 70's. That's about as useful as a feather in a knife fight, well unless you're Bruce Lee, he'd kill you with that feather, but I digress.

What's required now are ideas that can spread across multiple media and you can't simple recycle one and shoehorn it into another. Nobody wants to see your 30 sec TV commercial playing on their Instagram feed. There was a great article in Fast Company written about what is needed from a brief today, you can read that below.

Step 3: Once the creative thinkers have the brief in their hands they can then go about creating ideas. Remember, ideas...not executions and not media platforms - ideas.

Great ideas should be able to be moved into any area that will connect best with the desired audience.

There is no point writing TV commercials when your audience doesn't watch TV, and no, writing a 30-second TV spot and then running that one-off piece of communication on social media is not only a waste of money and a disservice to the client/brand, it's also just plain stupid.

The same applies for making a magazine ad for an audience that does not read magazines, and again, making a print ad and then just popping it onto Instagram and Facebook is beyond lazy and an insult to the intelligence of the audience you're supposed to be engaging with.

Gone are the days of the one size fits all ad campaign of the past.

So what isn't an idea? Here's a few quick examples.

* Thinking of who can Direct a video for you when you don't have an idea. There are more people guilty of this one infraction than you can imagine.

* Making the above video with all the bells and whistles and locations and special effects your budget can afford to mask the fact there is still no idea involved.

* Thinking about the latest digital application that is 'on trend' and dropping your brand into it with just an image and logo and no real thought let alone an idea.

* Taking the brand's tagline and simply slapping that on an image and re-sizing it across all digital media platforms - banner ads that look the same as the Instagram ads that look the same as the Facebook ad and so on. That right there is some expensive digital toilet paper.

* Something that simply isn't talking to your audience with messages they want to hear via platforms they are willing to hear it on. Shouting your brand tagline at someone is not exactly engaging with them.

Most digital advertising is a waste of time, money, and effort and so many clients/brands have been well and truly swindled, but many have woken up and more will follow. P&G recently drew a line in the sand regarding this issue as laid out in this recent article in The Wall Street Journal.

Embrace ideas.

Ideas are lovely creatures and they are very amiable, they play well with others. They can be as pliable as Play-Doh. Great ideas should be like a great character actor, they fit in wherever they need to and become what they need to become.

If you start with your media platform first you have for all intents and purposes put the cart before the horse. As is spelled out in the Fast Company article, you cannot rely on just one platform for your brand. You can't just have an Instagram solution, or only a Facebook solution. You need to think across the board and seek out where to place your ideas so as they connect with the right people in the right way...smart ideas can do that.

If you're talking to the 18-34 age group just take a look at the chart below. In the U.S. for example good luck connecting with this audience via only a 30 second TV commercial. They and for that matter most everyone use apps to connect, read articles, seek entertainment, find news, discover new things, research product reviews and click straight through to shopping for said products, and more. There is no 'one size fits all' solution. I'm not in this age group and I can honestly say I use all these apps as part of my daily routine.

One noticeable omission from the chart is Snap, once seen as the the contender to take on Mark Zuckerberg's stronghold over social media, but as we all know, social media and people's relationships with it can be a fickle thing, especially if one is basically doing the same as another. And this is why you cannot think 'media platform' first. Imagine an agency and brand deciding to throw everything they've got at Snap only to see its relevance being cast aside.

One more time - ideas first...media second.

Happy thinking.

Rodd Chant

I'm a Creative Director / Writer / Strategist / Thinker and a bit more. I work with clients/brands directly and with agencies and production companies. I also teach creative thinking and idea generation to groups and individuals. You can read more of my LinkedIn musings here. You can also find me on Twitter,  Instagram and on Facebook. Or drop me an email – [email protected]

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