OK this rant is bound to sound like I’m contradicting half of what I’ve said in the past. Let me be clear, I’m not one of those creative types who denounces all research and refuses to have their work tested or measured; in fact I’m usually the poster child for embracing it and informing my ideas through observing people. This post is about the value of a fresh perspective and intuition. It’s not about whether or not we should pay attention to client’s research, but rather when it should be introduced into the ideation process.

So I’ve always preached this simple process for developing big ideas.

Define the Intent, inform the idea, Develop the Concept, Verify it, Realize the idea, and Evolve it.

I swear to you guys, this works every time.  The formula works, but only if you follow the process to the letter. Very often teams choose to cut corners to save time and money, but that’s a mistake. Often we rationalize skipping a step, because the client seems to have already done all of the up-front work for you. Don’t get yourself get caught in that trap, specially if the client hands you a 400 page, 25 pound leather bound research brief that they call the Bible.

Remember why they hired your agency; the odds are they did not have all the right answers. They may have an idea of what they want to say, but you can be assured they don’t know how to say it. Remember David Ogilvy’s famous quote “why buy a dog, if you intend to do your own barking?”

So before you crack open that brief do your own thinking, only after you have developed a bunch of rough concepts should you read the clients research to help validate that one or more of your teams ideas align with the insights. Those initial uninformed ideas tend to provide the best foundation for the final campaign.

Our team gets in a room and starts to throw ideas around. We come up with a bunch of uninformed answers, and even more questions. We then go out to the world and observe consumer behavior, we talk to their customers and even their competitor’s customers, but most importantly we want to hear from the people who don’t even buy the stuff. This is the most important bit, all this happens before we have any pre-conceived biases that could be created by their research.

Take very good notes, then dive into every single page of their book. You are more likely to develop breakthrough ideas this way.