I Run A Global Advertising Agency. Here's How We Create Great Ideas — By Rewarding Lots of Bad Ideas

Where do bully ideas travel from?

After serving arsenic CEO of the advertizing agency BBDO Worldwide for 20 years, moving intimately pinch immoderate of the largest brands successful the world, I've travel to an answer: Good ideas travel from a willingness to person bad ideas — many, many bad ideas.

If you want the imaginative process to work, you must judge that it is messy. Instead of inching your way, measurement by step, from information to solution successful a logical progression, it's champion to make a chaotic array of possibilities and trial them retired connected the problem until thing clicks. Jump to conclusions without worrying astir really you transverse the intervening gap.

I cognize that sounds abstract. So here's a circumstantial example: Snickers.

The origins of an unthinkable campaign

My agency came up pinch the taxable "You're not you erstwhile you're hungry" for a Snickers campaign, which went connected to go 1 of the astir successful campaigns successful advertizing history. It launched pinch a Super Bowl advertisement successful 2010, featuring the legendary Betty White being "tackled" successful a shot game, and has been expanded and localized to 83 countries astir the world.

To this day, clients inquire really we sewage the idea. They want to cognize what marketplace investigation led america to the insight, past the foundational idea, and yet the Betty White book and run that drove millions to eat much candy bars. People ever presume it was an enactment of brand-purpose oriented, data-driven, logical deduction: When you're hungry, of people you enactment irrationally.

But we did not get astatine that penetration afloat formed. Here's the existent story.

When Snickers was first manufactured successful Chicago successful 1930, it was meant to beryllium a filling snack barroom erstwhile you were hungry. Little astir it has changed since. But a fewer years into the move of the twenty-first century, that enduring truth had started to go humdrum, and Snickers had fallen to No. 7 successful the cocoa category.

The situation became: How do you make thing caller and caller retired of the aforesaid aged thing? A statement for illustration "Hungry? Eat a Snickers" conscionable isn't going to trim it.

So here's what we did. David Lubars, who was BBDO's Chief Creative Officer astatine the time, gave the duty to 5 teams of people, who exchanged rings penning each kinds of (bad) Super Bowl scripts. Then David reviewed them all—and buried heavy wrong 1 of their scripts, hardly calling attraction to itself astatine all, was the statement "You're not you erstwhile you're hungry."

David recognized really powerful that thought could be. It was, he said, "so elastic and stretchy that it could spell anyplace successful the world it needed to go." And that's what happened. But to find an thought this powerful, he first needed to make that immense measurement of bad ideas—making it imaginable for David to place a kernel of greatness, spot its implications, stock his penetration pinch his colleagues, and get the support it needed.

How to reproduce this process

This whitethorn sound simple, but it is not, and it seldom happens organically. Instead, it requires thing that I telephone The Creative Shift —a deliberate and strategical choice to creation the conditions that will unleash productivity erstwhile an statement needs it the most.

Here's really to beryllium deliberate and strategical astir producing bad ideas, truthful you tin find the first one.

First, retrieve this: Most group don't understand the imaginative process. Instead, they often thin to opportunity things like: A bully thought tin travel from anyone. Or they mightiness say, there are nary bad ideas. But those concepts squelch creativity, alternatively than unleash it—because they put unit connected everyone to perform. After all, who cares if location are "no bad ideas" if everyone tin conceivably travel up pinch a awesome one.

That's why, to beryllium genuinely imaginative successful a group, you must flip these ideas around. You must show your team:

1. Bad ideas tin travel from everyone.

2. I want arsenic galore bad ideas arsenic imaginable successful a short play of time.

Why? Let's commencement pinch quality nature. People are acrophobic of making a mistake, truthful erstwhile they're challenged to travel up pinch tons of ideas, they often unopen down. They consciousness for illustration they're connected a precocious wire, pinch nary room to deviate. They commencement to wonder: What if I'm wrong? What if I look foolish successful beforehand of my leader and colleagues? Will I beryllium blamed if the thought doesn't work?

But erstwhile you specifically induce group to travel up pinch bad ideas, and to do it successful a short play of time, group commencement reasoning successful a much open-minded and imaginative ways—because they're nary longer constrained by the request to beryllium right, aliases good, aliases brilliant.

It's the fastest way to success

Maybe this process sounds inefficient. Why make and see tons of bad ideas, erstwhile you tin alternatively attraction your efforts connected the correct one?

Here's why: Most of the time, we person found, 9 retired of 10 ideas are simply not good.

So alternatively of trying to make bully ideas (which is inefficient and unrealistic), your first extremity is to simply make a batch of ideas. Idea measurement is simply a bully thing, because the champion ideas often statesman arsenic unrealized parts of different bad ideas.

Remember the Snickers example: The winning thought was buried successful an different humdrum script. David was the 1 who stumbled upon it, and past caught it.

As a leader, it's important to wholly alteration the measurement your group look astatine the idea-generation process and create a abstraction wherever they're encouraged to person tons of bad ideas. If you must reward group for thing astatine this stage, reward them for having the astir bad ideas.

From there, you'll unleash creativity. And you'll find the thought that matters.

Adapted from The Creative Shift: How to Power Up Your Organization by Making Space for New Ideas Copyright © 2025 by Andrew Robertson. Available from Basic Venture, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.