Page 42 - Demo

77When I decided to get into the advertising business, I had this mental picture of wild-eyed creative people, some smoking funny cigarettes, in a giant, cluttered, chaotic conference room, shouting out ideas, being creative. It was somewhat of a shock to fi nd out that most eff ective advertising is not created this way. Actually, the opposite is pretty much true. Some of the smartest, highest-paid strategists I now know in advertising, who come up with famous campaigns you see on TV or in your favorite magazine or in online media, are very organized, disciplined people who amass and consider huge amounts of data and information and fi nally arrive at their ideas in a very deliberate fashion. Some of these people are even dull!As I%u2019ve grown older, however, I%u2019ve come to appreciate this pedantic approach. And to abhor the %u201cnew%u201d or %u201coriginal%u201d idea. We rarely get paid CHAPTER 6Must You Invent? A Pox on Creativity%u201cI have never made the slightest eff ort to compose anything original.%u201d%u2014Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart