Ideas, Concepts, and Execution: No Idea Is a Bad Idea

Yesterday, I was watching TV, when I saw this Progressive ad play for the first time. I really like their concept with the whole "don't be your parents" commercials, and because of that, I began thinking about coming up with the ideas for work like this.

I really like this ad because I find it pretty amusing. It is great to hear them fire off some of the one-liners they do and then cut to the reactions of some of the other people in the group. When we think about a commercial for insurance, humor isn't the first thing that comes to mind. However, creating an ad like this pulls you in right off the bat because you are wondering what is going on with this group and where the commercial may be going next. An the end of it all, we find out this was an ad for Progressive to bundle home and auto insurance, and it actually seems to work pretty well due to the fact it is a goofy ad that people will remember.

In order to create something, you need ideas. Recently, after going to the drone film festival, one of the winners brought up an exercise he does every week with his team. This exercise was to simply come up with 50 ideas each that they can all share with one another. Now, 50 ideas may sound like a lot and it certainly is, but it is not impossible to do by any means. If you can't come up with 50, start with 10-20 and work your way up. I was thinking about starting this exercise with my team just to be able to get together and get the ideas flowing. If we have five people with 20 ideas each, that's 100 ideas that we can go through when we meet. No matter how good or bad these ideas are, we can build off them and pick out some of the best ones that we want to move forward with. 

Whether you have good ideas or bad ideas like a corny one-liner, they are all ideas that have potential. If you start paying attention to ads on TV, you will see a lot of serious commercials, funny commercials, and boring commercials. We take an idea, create a concept, and execute it. It is really interesting to see what different companies do for advertising and even more interesting to think about all the ideas that were put together to create the final product.