Tuesday Tip No.3 - Play Family Fortunes

Here's the third in my series of possibly useless tips for young creatives.

A lot of creatives - when they are just starting out - write ads that are too complicated or obscure. For example, TV scripts that you need to have seen a specific German art-house film to understand.

They do this for the right reason - they want to create something fresh and wonderful, something never seen in an ad before. And yes, good ads must be fresh and engaging. But if the audience is going to connect, they've also got to be simple and obvious.

Let's look at this brilliant Guardian ad.


The brief was "advertise our guide to gastropubs".

So, in a quest for the simple and obvious... let's play Family Fortunes.

We asked 100 people 'Name something you might find in a pub'. Top answer? A pint of beer.

We asked 100 people 'Name something you associate with good food'. Top answer? A chef.

Next comes the tricky bit. How to make quite ordinary-looking material - a pint of beer and a chef's hat - into something extraordinary. As you can see, the team found a way to do it. They created something weird and never-seen-before, but which at the same time is very clear and obvious.

And the key - for me - is to start from the simple, the ordinary, and the everyday. Take the top answer from Family Fortunes, and find a way to make it extraordinary.

Tuesday Tip No.2
Tuesday Tip No.1