Why we come up with terrible ideas

A couple of months ago, we decided to start coming up with terrible ideas.

Before our clients reading this begin to panic, we’ll explain a new tool we’ve been using for unlocking ideas and cracking briefs. And don’t worry, this isn’t another post about AI.

You're sitting looking at the brief and sometimes it just isn’t happening. It might be jam-packed with too many mandatories to cram into a coherent idea. It might be too wide and you don’t know where to even start. You might not have enough time. You might have too much time.

Or you might just not be feeling particularly creative at 9am on a Tuesday morning after staying up last night to watch one more episode of that show everyone is battering on about.

Getting stuck is an inevitable part of coming up with ideas. It’s important to remember here that people who work in creative agencies are not the only folk whose job it is to be creative. Plus, if we all read the same industry reports and follow the same marketing trends, we’re going to arrive at more or less the same ideas. And we don’t want to do that.

With this in mind, what inspirations and learnings can we take from outside of our immediate industry? What can we apply from other people who create?

Wilco play here in Edinburgh this weekend. With twelve albums, four Grammys and a bestselling book on the creative process (“How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back”), it’s safe to say frontman Jeff Tweedy knows a thing or two about great ideas, and how to get them.

Adam Alter, author of Anatomy of a Breakthrough, explains how Tweedy will often deliberately produce the worst sentences and most boring musical phrases to “pour out” the bad and make way for the good.

A few months back, we trialled a similar approach during a creative session (which, let’s face it, have needed some pepping up post-lockdown). As well as being a bit daft and fun, this ‘negative brainstorming’ helped us to unearth a pitch-winning idea. Here’s why:

1. You’re doing something rather than being stuck. You’re loosening up and becoming more idea prone. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing” (some cool-headed advice from Walt Disney and his big frozen heid).
2. You’re having fun, and this unleashes creativity. It’s no coincidence that a lot of our best ideas bubble to the surface when we’re in relaxed, unstressed and happier brain states - i.e. not staring desperately at a blank piece of paper or Google Doc.
3. By flipping the task, you’re identifying potential new problems and ticking each off with a solution. After all, it’s easier to look at a terrible idea and work out what could be done to make it better than to magic a great idea out of nowhere.
4. It can ease inhibitions. It’s often intimidating, especially for those in non ‘creative’ roles or juniors for example, to pluck up the courage to share in a group creative session. ‘What if they hate my idea?’ If everyone in the room is being quick-fire and silly - with no judgement - this can break the ice a little.

Also, it’s fun, trying to outdo each other and make each other laugh with crappy ideas, until… “wait…stop, that one wasn’t so crap, go back to that one”. Boom!

With every project, we set out to make Something People Genuinely Like. Recently we realised, that sometimes the best way to achieve this is to start off by thinking of what they’d definitely NOT like..

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This article was written by George Gunn who is our Creative Strategist at Studio Something. We are on a mission to make Something people genuinely like; be that a TV show, piece of branding or a new format no one has thought of. We like to come up with the right solution, not the easy solution for our partners. Give us a follow and tell yer pals we exist