As Bill Bernbach used to say: "Everybody has ideas. The important thing is to be able to RECOGNIZE whether it's good." This is super important because there are almost always more people in the room who are responsible for recognizing good ideas than for generating them.
As I used to say: "People's response to creativity is physical. When you want to know if an idea is good, watch the room. A good idea attracts -- and makes people physically lean in. Or face light up. Or palms sweat."
Does every idea need to be a WOW? Isn't the role of an experienced creative leader to help make/turn something that isn't WOW, into a wow? So- to reframe the question, how do you know when you have something that could be a WOW, but isn't quite there yet?
Having lived through too many boardroom crash and burns based on the decider du jour saying "I'm not feeling it," I'm voting for your take over Dusenberry's — and not by a small margin. That said, I wonder if "wow" isn't similarly susceptible to people conflating their reactions with the audience's. While great ideas do transcend, it's also true that selling funny to the humorless, or color to the colorblind, isn't easy. De gustimus non est disputandum is as true now as it was when the phrase was first chiseled.
But maybe that's the thing: "wow" can be a destination, but it can also be a journey. And we need to be able to 'splain to Dusenberry's boardroom how it gerts there.
As Bill Bernbach used to say: "Everybody has ideas. The important thing is to be able to RECOGNIZE whether it's good." This is super important because there are almost always more people in the room who are responsible for recognizing good ideas than for generating them.
As I used to say: "People's response to creativity is physical. When you want to know if an idea is good, watch the room. A good idea attracts -- and makes people physically lean in. Or face light up. Or palms sweat."
Or make you go: "Wow."
Does every idea need to be a WOW? Isn't the role of an experienced creative leader to help make/turn something that isn't WOW, into a wow? So- to reframe the question, how do you know when you have something that could be a WOW, but isn't quite there yet?
Does every idea need to be wow? No, but the framework will make you aware of what you have. Thanks for reading.
Having lived through too many boardroom crash and burns based on the decider du jour saying "I'm not feeling it," I'm voting for your take over Dusenberry's — and not by a small margin. That said, I wonder if "wow" isn't similarly susceptible to people conflating their reactions with the audience's. While great ideas do transcend, it's also true that selling funny to the humorless, or color to the colorblind, isn't easy. De gustimus non est disputandum is as true now as it was when the phrase was first chiseled.
But maybe that's the thing: "wow" can be a destination, but it can also be a journey. And we need to be able to 'splain to Dusenberry's boardroom how it gerts there.