Methods
There’s a famous quote from the very prolific Dr. Linus Pauling, “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” We use some techniques that are not standard in the business, but which we have found to be wildly effective.
We generate these ideas from our knowledge and research, from the know-how and expertise of our clients and their employees, and from the creative interaction of the two.
Knowledge Based
For us it starts with a deep knowledge base that ranges across many disciplines both theoretical and practical. We know a lot more than our competitors. But we don’t know it all. That’s why we back up our knowledge with research.
During our early days in advertising, using expensive research firms was the only way to find the background info needed. But now online research via Google, AI LLMs, and other search engines offers more and better information, usually for little or no cost. Every day we rely on this new research potential to supplement our knowledge and experience and keep it up to date.
We can also augment our analysis of search results with skillfully prompted LLMs.
Our cross-disciplinary method has often helped us solve client problems. Frequently we were able to take big ideas that were already mainstream in one industry and import them into a new industry to achieve breakthrough results. Our experience in working in diverse product and service categories makes this possible.
Knowledge Evaluation
This is a bigger problem than ever. In all fields there is a lowering of standards when it comes to reality-based criticism of the knowledge used. And since many understand that this is the case, there is a lowering of trust that goes along with it.
When you hear people say that we need people to become more “media literate,” what they usually mean is that they want people to be more critical in what they accept as true. Many years in science and academic research has helped us to use stricter standards in criticising what we think we know.
Throughout my career I have worked with clients with strong beliefs and no empirical justification. One long-time client of ours had the idea that each of the ads we produced had to be positive. You could never write a headline making a negative point.
He would never approve a tagline that said “Don’t Leave Home Without It.” Instead he would re-write it as “Always Take It With You.” Yet mountains of research shows the oppositie of this principle.
Client Know-how
Our clients spend their days drilling down in their fields to improve products and services, and to understand the marketplace they work in. This can develop a clear understanding of prospects, customers, and competitors. This knowledge and expertise is critical to generating effective communication in advertising and public relations.
We know clients are usually too close to their company and need to have their views expanded by outside people to better persuade the public. Yet this inside knowledge needs to be mined and exploited in crafting the messages we prepare. So we listen!
Good listening has become a rare trait. Many of our clients told us they felt many of the people they worked with in the past never really listened to what they had to say. We don’t make that mistake. It would make our work suffer if we did.
One of the first big corporate brochures we created was for a large international brokerage firm. They had already hired and paid three other agencies to do the project. But they were so dissatisfied with the generic content that was created that none of the brochures got produced.
Then when they saw out copy and design, they used it to produce an upscale piece they were confident would appeal to their clients in world markets. The CEO attributed our understanding of the content to more than 11 years of experience we had in the futures brokerage industry. Actually with good research we could have done the same in any industry.
Interaction With Clients
Among advertising creators, you frequently hear stories about how the clients killed their best ideas. Often that’s true. But what you don’t hear is that clients working with their writers helped them produce their best ideas.
In many cases, we’ve found the best ideas came neither from the client nor from us, but from the two of us working together. We examine existing approaches, brain storm new directions, criticize and re-evaluate our work, and then see pearls emerge that we could not have created alone.
So when we write something and even before that when we put together our creative strategy, we start with ideas we have developed in conjunction with our clients.