The Big Idea: It’s all in your head

Dissecting the Brain’s Love/Hate relationship with Originality

By: Shu Manalo, Executive Creative Director

I love a bad brief, the kind that precedes a tragic brainstorm where people end up with the same ideas. Take a company’s 50th anniversary for example. The typical brief would be to come up with a title and key visual. The same thing happens: I see gold, in every permutation of it. And when the client laps it up like it’s the most groundbreaking concept in the world, it makes one wonder the value of an original idea. Why should we bother? 

It’s hard to knock a cliché. For people in any creative line of business, or in any business for that matter, clichés are life-savers. They’re easy go-tos for writers and designers with one hand on a page and the other tied behind their backs with tight deadlines, budget considerations, and risk-averse clients. 

But that’s not the only reason. Clichés are true and definitive. The fact that they’re predictable makes clichés infallible in research. Target markets get them and clients don’t need to explain them to sales. It’s an easy sell. However, that’s where it ends. While you will find little resistance to it, you will also find little notice, much less a second look. Clichés blend into the background. If it finds execution, it will likely be forgettable. 

Why, then, do people gravitate toward such ideas?

There is something about the way the brain works that makes humans creatures of habit. The brain finds comfort in what it knows. In some ways, it numbs them towards persistent stimulus the way a nagging mother does. If someone has heard, seen, smelled, and tasted something many times before, the brain ticks it off as a safe bet. In the worst case, the stimulus becomes unnoticeable. 

But the brain has a secondary mechanism. When it’s introduced a stimulus that is shocking, surprising, or unexpected, its synapses fire up, and new connections are built at lightning speed. Human survival has always depended on the brain recognizing anything out of the ordinary. So while people might not want to see or try anything too alien, once their senses are invaded by new and shocking stimuli, their brains go on full-alert and retain the information. People instinctively scream or shout. In content and advertising parlance, presented with a totally original idea, people engage.

So, how can we ignite and trigger engagement? Here are a few tricks: 

Avoid clichés. Let the gold go! It’s been done about two thousand and three trillion times. Know the paradigms for every brand, product, and event you’ve been asked to pitch for, post them on the wall to remind you where not to go. Say goodbye to Christmases in red and green and tinseltown. Avoid red, yellow, and blue for anything about the Philippines. Begin every brainstorm by writing down all the clichés. 

Find new points of view. Don’t go for the first nugget of truth about the target market. Find interesting angles that make the target market more unique than they are homogenous. For example, millennials invest in experiences instead of financial instruments. Banks should stop telling them to save. Instead, maybe tell them to plan for that 2022 trip.

Go for the extreme emotions. Anger, fear, or disgust. These emotions move people to act and react. If you want to be noticed, these are the trigger emotions. Happiness and contentment, while great brand emotions, tend to keep the target’s mind steady and safe in its comfort zone. But they don’t push urgency. If you can’t go for the extreme emotions, at least go for excitement and thrill. 

Be polarizing.  A centric opinion is boring. No one will argue; no one will care. But pick a side and go extremely right or left, and conversations will get started. This is why politically-charged content tends to go viral. But it doesn’t always need to be political. Even inanities can have a viral effect. 

Mind the crafting. Many great ideas die at the hands of bad execution. Art direction, copywriting, even musical scoring taken towards surprising and unpredictable routes can make the audience see something in a new light. In a world of integrated marketing, there are no small roles, only small-minded execution. Find interesting and surprising angles in the different media channels  where you can fire up the audience’s collective brain.

These routes towards an original idea don’t mean you can’t go towards slower, more informative and educational routes. Marketing and communications have always been about convincing an audience about an idea. Clichés need ubiquity and a huge share of space to get some kind of blind allegiance. Education and information dissemination will require time and media mileage. So, there is room for these types of ideas if you have the time and money to let them simmer. But an original idea, executed well? That’s going to stick, and stick fast.

Next time you get a brief, good or bad, skin it a different way. Who knows, you just might strike gold.