Page 7 - AdNews Magazine May-June 2022

Editor’s Letter
Where do (good) ideas come from?
Agreat story can sell. Consumers like to be enter- tained and will reward a tale well told but have an aversion to being oversold.
The exception is when it’s so over the top it’s amusing. The 1980s car dealer Tony Packard “... up the Windsor Road from
Baulkham Hills, and let ME
do it right for YOU!”
Story is what draws us in.
We asked Tom van Laer, asso- ciate professor of Narratology, The University of Sydney, to explain: “Story is an account of an event or a sequence of events leading to a transition from an initial state to a later or end state, which a storyteller conveys to a story consumer.
“The mental state of nar- rative transportation explains the persuasive effect of stories on consumers. When consumers lose them- selves in a story become transported, their behaviour changes to reflect that story.
“Non-commercial stories
acknowledge and maintain a
story’s entertainment value,
whereas commercial stories
are also told with a different aim in mind ( marketing and persuasion).
“To work (persuade), stories must be perceived as produced by storytellers who are intrinsically moti- vated by their inherent value, without an overtly persuasive aim.
“When consumers instead realise a profit motive behind a story, effectiveness is inhibited. As a result, consumers are critical in response to stories that ooze with commercial interest. In brief, it is
important to balance the intention to persuade with the intention to entertain.”
Give the consumer a good story and keep the com- mercial message simple.
Where do ideas
come from?
Luke Martin - executive crea- tive director, 72andSunny: “Diverse experiences and per- spectives colliding together.”
Independent creative Adrian Elton: “Ideas are a response to stimulus. A solution to a problem. An answer to a question. Or a question to an answer that no longer makes sense amidst changed circum- stances. And as is so often the case with innovation in general, the unexpected re-contextual- isation of pre-existing ideas, or possibilities, often sparks the genesis of something new.”
Scott Huebscher, executive creative director, VCCP: “I could say ideas come from any- where and nowhere. From places I've visited and places that don't exist. From having
conversations at a restaurant over dinner with others or by staring at a campfire completely alone. But if I had to say I give just a one-word answer as to where ideas come from: Necessity. We need to come up with an idea because that's our job.”
Mike Spirkovski, now former chief creative officer, Saatchi & Saatchi: “I would suspect that almost every creative person in this business thinks about ideas all day, every day, in every way ... working on some- thing like this is not work, it's actually love.”
EDITOR
CHRIS PASH
www.adnews.com.au | May - June 2022 7