Despite what you may have been told – idea generation is far from a formal thing – miles from a black box of inspiration, realization or genius. It’s just bloody hard work and very scary. It’s late nights and nervous presentations; checking sanity alongside evolution, scrapping the dull, the inflexible, smoothing the rough and moulding the soft. Its a craft.

At its best it’s all of us hands dirty, at its worse its one of us, sheets of A3 and buckets loads of Coke, weeping into our pencil cases.

Client requirements, agency briefing, wrangling positioning, all have their place in this process, but mostly it’s down to intolerant alliance, a few of us bouncing brains and nurturing waffle.

This drive to idea tends to stop by a few service stations;

Please wait will we connect you…

Our requirement for the idea to connect with its audience is challenging. Subjectivity, culture, and just plain personalities always get in the way. “I know it when you see it”, is a pretty standard approach. But connection tends to be a different thing, healthy doses of empathy and often audience hugging are needed.Seeking connection reminds me of a stand up gig the other day. A female comedian expressing naïve mystery about her husband’s excessive use of Original Source Mint & Tea Tree shampoo. Leaving half the audience completely mystified and the other half aching with connection. Genius. A true connection, no where near big enough for one of our tasks – but a pretty good demonstration?

We seek whoppers

Once we have stumbled across a  wrapper for a brand, its task and audience understanding it all gets a little bit more practical. How can it work in a sales conversation, ad land, could it stretch enough to be experiential, what about a direct mail campaign. A huge expectation from something we often struggle to define. We know it’s wrong when it fails to live in these channels but are often not sure how right it needs to be – or what amount of forcing the idea is allowed before its bin fodder.

Nice and tight

Despite needing to stretch and connect the damn thing also needs to be compact enough to be a saleable, rather than a sprawl of desperation to meet the previous two. This is thesaurus land for many, finding encompassing words to reduce down the flabbiness, and its often this stage that benefits from the creative team honing it as part of the creative process. Encapsulation in visual concept can at times save our bacon.

Finally when something presents itself, and checks the above criteria you allow yourself a moment to exhale. In the meantime the next mountain appears on the horizon; how to make this big thing live in the here and now. Its ridiculous – like having a baby, marvelling for 2 seconds and expecting it to start fitting the kitchen –  the little fella keeps swallowing all the Allen keys.

It’s a far from  linear journey and this week has seen us arrive at a place that we should have started from more than once.

I am sure there are a few more  idea assessments and I am going to endeavor to give this a little more time, and perhaps stop distracting myself from my wodge of A3 paper and scribbles I have in front of me.

I found this out via this little gem with Elizabeth Gilbert, a writer and loved her view on ego, creativity, struggle and the role of hard slog and luck.

Notebook in hand I was aiming to learn what it means to be innovative – what are the secrets behind it and indeed is there a set formula that can help us to ensure that our work is always as relevant and insightful as possible.

Speaking at the event were 4 successful inventors all well in the swing of marketing and production and on their way to what seemed to be a fairly common goal of making money! What interested me the most was the similarities in the principles and attitudes of these inventors to our industry. So what did I learn…?

The need to have an idea but to accept that it will evolve was potentially the rule that most resonated for me. Ideas – no matter how inspirational they may be, need to adapt and change and most importantly they need to be relevant to the end user. Without knowing your customer, what makes them tick and why they would be interested, your idea is likely to sink. Whilst these 4 inventors were unique in the way they described their experiences, they all had this understanding in common. They demonstrated a vast understanding of the market within which their product/idea sat and talked passionately about who their customer was and how they interacted with their product. Finally the importance of having a brand that wraps the idea and being a true advocate for the brand (with a small air of arrogance and belief) was something that I’m sure has guided their success.

Whilst I am still not convinced that I have a set formula in my armoury to help me to learn the art of innovation, I was certainly reassured that we too are doing something right…

However, the value of these ideas is massively underestimated – it’s rare that agencies are paid on an idea basis. The reason? Ideas are an intangible asset. As vital as they are to business relationships, ideas can’t be easily measured. This is a pity, because great ideas take time to perfect. That lightbulb moment that tells us when an idea is worth shaping, is only the beginning.

I often realise the irony of the best ideas – stunning, clear thoughts received with surprise and delight – being the ones that take hours and amendments galore. But shaping ideas is surely more of a craft than generating them – so why don’t we like to admit that we spend time on the process?

I recently presented an prescription campaign which has taken us a few weeks to get to the standard we wanted, and mentioning this effort felt like an embarrassment. It was really difficult to admit to the challenge of delivering huge – not ad-big, but big idea-big – ideas. OK, it wasn’t a straightforward brief. But more than that, I suppose we fear that “the process” makes our ideas less pure, less special.

The truth is, marketing doesn’t often deconstruct stuff into a single grain of truth. We more often assemble and dissemble things into a desirable outcome. We often collaborate with each other in doing so.

Let’s not be ashamed of that. Let’s admit to the hard work of it, and be especially proud when it has taken several minds to get it right. Without wanting to hang on like a dog with a de Bono, I must add that ideas are never owned by one department. As a great art director once said to me: “Everyone should have an idea, or be able to make mine much better”.

Convention in healthcare communications says yes. HCPs lack time – the mental link must happen, and quickly. Consistency also makes sense when global visibility outranks the needs of diverse markets. Waning production budgets make this a fact of our industry.

Clearly we need to retain some consistency in our creative work, but brands can also capitalise on the much bigger premise of coherence. That means staying true to your message first, thus having more freedom in its execution. This brings meaning to brands – your materials and tactics don’t just strike a chord because they look the same, they resonate because they mean the same.

It works because your big idea becomes more than the sum of its parts. When we talk to doctors, why not be that much braver – who says they can’t put two and two together after all?

The real benefits of coherence lie in consumer marketing. New media has a lot to do with patient power. As people search wider for answers in healthcare, so we gain new ways to reach them. Our brand becomes a stream of conversations that evolves along with the community around it. Take a step back and you see how big and relevant the picture has become.

Agencies must face facts – the definition of integration has moved on. Let’s commit to bigger, braver thinking in healthcare with coherent strategies that everyone can profit from.