A writing team or a team of writers?

A creative team or a team of creatives?

People who work together to be better, or people who are better on their own?

People who support each other or people who stand alone?

People who share thoughts or people who keep their opinions to themselves?

Writers who spark off others or writers who shine alone?

Everyone has a favourite way. I've worked with people who prefer to do it their way, and others who want to draw out different perspectives from others. Some are great. Some are not. Some are simply the right peg in the wrong hole.

There's no "right way". There is only "what's right for this challenge?"

Bill Bernbach - Godfather of Advertising and the B in Doyle Dane Bernbach when DDB was the epicentre of great advertising creativity - was the first Creative Director to put writers and art directors together in the same room. (Previously, the writers came up with ideas on their own and slid a sheet of paper under the design studio door and promptly forgot about the ad and went to lunch while the art directors tried to make sense of the words.)

Bernbach figured that words and pictures working together make communication better. Sharper. More effective. This collision of different ways of thinking - visual and logical - created faster links to bigger benefits in less space.

My observation is, with shorter deadlines and greater pressures to tell clients and customers "what we do", we lose the ability to sell people on "why we're better."

Because identifying "why we're better" takes time. And most of us are so busy leaping into "what we do" we rush straight past "what's in it for you."

Which, I believe, is why time spent at the start of a project, bouncing ideas off the heads of other engaged people, gives you a better chance at identifying a unifying idea which creates the theme which wins you the business.

Not an hour or two.

A day or two.

Or three.

It's a dangerous, uncomfortable, illogical, crazy, time-wasting, inefficient process. But it's probably still the best way to come up with an idea that unifies everything you say and every promise you make. An idea that captures the attention of the client and gets them excited enough to desperately want you to work on their business.

In a world where everyone is able to promise what everyone else is promising, a better idea is the best legal competitive advantage you can have.