Keeping A Good Idea Alive

3 case studies of how a good idea survives the client’s cutting board

I learned something quite surprising during a recent afterwork drinks session. You know the type of session I’m talking about: trendy media types all gathered outside their local watering hole and trading their favorite industry war stories. This is what I learned: J.K Rowling’s book “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” — the book that launched the writer into one of the most famous authors of our time — was turned down by the publisher 12 times before it was accepted. As unbelievable as that might sound, J. K. Rowling isn't the only well known author that this has happened to. Stephen King’s book “Carrie” was rejected 30 times before the publisher was convinced that it would sell. “Gone with the wind” by Margaret Mitchell was rejected 38 times. "Watership Down" by Richard Adams: 26 times.?

Can you imagine if any one of these authors gave up after their idea was rejected the first time?

This phenomenon isn't restricted to writing either. Before Daft Punk made it permanently into our collective consciousness, the French duo Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, originally played music under the name “Darlin.” An early negative review of their work in Melody Maker dismissed the music as "a bunch of daft punk.” The bad review became a rallying call for the two Frenchman, and they went on to make that words of that bad review one of the most famous names in music history.?

My conversation outside the bar turned to similar stories found around the ad business. Stories about how highly awarded ad campaigns struggled to get past the cutting-room floor. Here are three of those stories.

Ideas come in all shapes — convincing the client

Someone mentioned that they heard it took nearly a year for Fallon to convince Sony to run the Bravia ad where they filmed a quarter of a million colored balls bouncing down a street in San Francisco. “How could you possibly find fault with that concept,” I thought. The commercial was a great introduction to the ‘Color Like No Other’ campaign for Sony Bravia.? It illustrated how color is so important in such a beautiful and simple way.?

However, the story goes that Sony didn’t ‘get it’ at first and Fallon spent months trying to convince them that it was the right idea for the campaign. The rumor continued that one of the marketing managers felt so strongly about the proposed ad that they threatened to resign the agency if they suggested it again.

Fallon took the ad to Sony's board with resignation letter in hand. That's how much they believed in the campaign. Thankfully for us, Fallon's persistence helped convince the client to invest in the idea.

Who knows how true the story is. However, anyone who has ever pitched a creative idea knows there will be gatekeepers like this that will try to hold back ideas that seem to push the boundaries. I keep this little anecdote in my back pocket to remind me that sometimes you need to be persistent when it comes to new ideas.

It’s not about client vs agency — convincing the shareholders

After talking about the Sony campaign, someone else outside the bar added that there is a similar story around the Cadbury’s Gorilla campaign. You know the one: a gorilla playing the drum fill from Phil Collins song “In The Air Tonight.” Imagine a world without that ad?!

But as popular as the ad is now, it almost never made it to the screen. When the agency pitched the initial idea to Phil Rumbol, Cadbury’s Director of Marketing at the time, he loved it. When Rumbol pitched it to his superiors however, they basically told him “You are never showing this ad.” Rumbol persevered and after four months convinced his team that the agency’s idea would nail the brief in terms of making the audience feel something again for the category. And I’m glad he did.

It also goes to show that it’s not just agency vs client. Many times marketing directors are defending ideas just as hard as a war torn creative. It’s more about convincing the individuals who stand in the way of pioneering ideas, no matter who that might be.

Death by committee — convincing the world

In this business we are constantly creating something new… something that the public has never seen before. As a result, sometimes it’s hard to communicate exactly what we are creating to our clients. We have loads of tools to help us communicate our ideas — storyboards, illustrations, animatics — but a lot of the time it’s difficult to really convey what is in your head until it’s finished. And a lot of the time the most groundbreaking projects are things we don’t even know we need before it’s created because it IS completely new.? It’s like that thought that Henry Ford had when he was engineering the first mass market automobile. He said, “if you asked people what they wanted, they would say ‘give me a faster horse.”?

“So often ideas get diluted down because people are worried about what the public will think,” says the Brand Marketer for Guinness, Andy Fennell. AMV BBDO along with Fennell and his team were behind the creation of one of the most iconic and memorable ads of all time: the Guinness Surfer ad.

Sure, it's hard to imagine a world where this advertisement doesn't exist. But when I think about the context in which the original idea was being pitched, it kind of blows my mind. How did this commercial ever actually make it past the concept stage. Think about it. This is the late 90s. Advertisements are full of color and designed to snare your short attention span with fast-paced visuals and popular music. This creative team is pitching an idea that will be in black and white and won't even have sound for the first 10 seconds. The ad makes perfect sense in hindsight — good things come to those who wait — but at the time, I can just imagine being laughed out of the pitch room for suggesting a commercial that went so far against popular culture at the time.

And indeed, once a pilot for the commercial was tested in focus groups, it failed miserably. “We ignored the research,” says Fennell.? “That’s not me being an advocate for ignoring research, but sometimes you have such a profound belief in what you can produce,” continues Fennel. “The agency had a really good idea and then we all just protected that idea until the public had a chance to see it.”

And thank goodness they did. The marketing team's strategy for keeping the Guinness Surfer idea alive was to persevere with an idea that they believed in rather than fold to public opinion that didn't know how to react to something so groundbreaking.

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I'm sure there are many more fantastic stories out there about how agencies had to fight tooth and nail to bring campaigns to life; campaigns that today might seem obvious but were hard to sell in at the time.? Stories like these should act as a call-to-action to all creatives, account people, strategists and clients to protect ideas you believe in, even if the world isn't ready. Don't let practicalities, or outside opinions, or the fear of the unknown get in the way of producing a good idea.