Learnings from the murder capital of creativity

One of the most disappointing things with New York advertising was seeing how many great ideas were killed at the hands of clients (there could be a whole other post on the death of internal ideas).

My first 18 months in New York were at the murder capital of creativity…a digital department of a traditional agency.

We had some of the world’s best digital creatives, we presented hundreds of creative ideas to clients and we did not make one thing.

Like a crazed coroner, I started a never-ending mission to work out why there was such a high mortality rate of great ideas. Asking every person I could, analyzing every client meeting, digging deep into weird data sources. Here are my findings so far on keeping great ideas alive;

Talk money early

If you want to do something innovative you need to make sure you put money aside early and let the client know you are doing so. I created Blueprints to answer this problem.

Sell in the “Golden Window”

There is a certain window of time where all clients will buy an idea, for me it was 110–80 days from going live. Read more here.

Sell in the “Buzzer Beater Window”

The 72-hour window after you sell the idea and before you start going into production is the time you need to push to sell your most creative complements to the idea.

Honeymoon period

The first year of the relationship with a new client or CMO is always the best time to try the most experimental work.

Double-digit bombs

Companies that are seeing exponential growth or decline are the ones that will usually take the risk of more creative work. Single digit change is the home to safe work.

Last Quarter Budget Fillers

The “use it or lose it” annual budgeting method usually means that the last month of the financial year will see a surge in ideas brought in order to reach budget caps.

Planners the truffle pigs of agencies

The more planners thinking about the mortality rate of great ideas, the more great work gets made. Planners should see themselves as truffle pigs, hunting out great creative opportunities for creatives to execute on.

If you’re a planner and want tools, resources and brain bombs for your strategy comms, then sign up to my Planning Dirty Newsletter here.