24/07/2008The 7 Advertising Ideas 26th September

The 7 Ideas is a workshop for anyone interested in communications. The structure of the session is: 1. What is creativity and what is it really that agencies are selling their clients? 2. Ideas - but we sell different sorts of ideas. Some are called big ideas, some are called strategies, others are called campaigns. We disentangle each from the others. 3. When we get down to executional ideas, there are only 7. I illustrate each with TV, yes, but also with DM and integrated campaigns too to show how the model works across every channel. 4. It is good to work against a 'live' brief and get attendees thinking imaginatively about a problem. Sometimes I get them to think about how they would advertise their own agency. Which medium would they choose? Which idea is most relevant - to their target audience? To their budget? 5. The workshop is a great help to creative people, giving them tools to start having ideas within moment of receiving a brief rather than sitting and waiting for inspiration. It is a tool for planners and account management when writing briefs, encouraging them to realise their input will determine the nature of the output. For others in agency life, from project management to production, it helps generate a sense of an 'ideas culture' in which any person can have an idea that changes everything. Because, as I said earlier, not all ideas are executions. They are solutions to problems. 6. This is an interactive workshop and attendees cannot expect to come and sit passively for three hours. They will be asked to have ideas throughout the session. If they can bring real briefs they are working on, so much the better.