To Be an Idea Person, You Must Learn to Strip

My high school friend grew up to be one hell of a successful producer and songwriter in Malaysia.

He once told me that a pop song should work with just the singer and a guitarist: stripped to its spine.

To me, this thought should be employed to any idea: if you had nothing to show it off with, can your idea be shared and understood through word of mouth?

The Elevator Pitch

I’m still quite a young advertiser and I don’t pretend to know much—if at all— so I implore you to challenge everything I write, but I think we can agree that most great ideas are simple.

My ECD at Leo Burnett had a pitching process that I love: if you can’t sell him your idea in two or three sentences, it needs to be reworked.

I was shot down a lot. For every 35 ideas I’d come up with, he’d pick half of one; the other half I would have to rework.

The shit thing about being shot down is that you get discouraged easily.

But when an idea sticks, you run around town screaming about it. Which is, hopefully, exactly what your customers will do with your idea.

Simple works

Strip your idea.

If it sucks, rework it.

If it still sucks, chuck it.

But never stop churning.

To come up with a quality idea, you must first come up with a quantity of ideas.

Just remember to keep the idea simple; Einstein once said of an idea that “if you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

Thank you so much for reading.

I am a Malaysian copywriter living in Singapore. If you’d like to see my work, please check out my online portfolio: www.imranatwork.com