Ideas First Recap #4 (4/27): Role Playing

Now that everyone has completed their creative briefs, it's time for a little professional role playing: creatives and clients.

We're four weeks into the quarter and everyone has already finished a couple creative briefs. After teaching Ideas First for the past four years, I must admit that I'm impressed by your work and dedication. Each quarter, I start with a general course outline, steering the weekly lesson plan and assignments based on how quickly students are able to understand the material... and, everyone is doing wonderfully—you should all be proud of yourselves.

This past week, we spent a majority of class presenting your creative briefs. Composing a brief is one thing, but presenting it is entirely another. Most of you did well under pressure—the five minute limit, having 15 other people listening to every word—and I hope that you'll all feel more confident as the weeks go by. In advertising, your creative is only as effective as your presentation (consider Mad Men's Don Draper) and the right skills are developed with experience.

In watching your presentations, I noticed a lot of you tended to lean on your slides, reading each sentence word-for-word. Instead, your slides should work as visual/mental cues for you to present your thoughts... ideally, you would scan your slide for a few seconds before addressing your audience accordingly (and never looking back). You need to be an expert at your content, able to collect, revise and remix your thoughts at a moment's notice, while still making your point.. Additionally, a lot of you used entire sentences in your slides... this is okay, as long as you emphasize the most important points, using bold or italicized type. Personally, I like using bullet points as much as possible... they're easier for you to scan, as well as your client to remember. For example, consider the following paragraph:

The Big Pink are an electro-rock duo from London, England, comprising multi-instrumentalists Robbie Furze and Milo Cordell. The duo signed to the 4AD label in 2009, and won the prestigious NME Philip Hall Radar Award for best new act. To date, they have released five singles, with their debut album A Brief History of Love released in September 2009.

You edit to a few sentences, with key points in bold type:

The Big Pink are an electro-rock duo from London, England. Signed to 4AD in 2009. Won the NME award for best new act. Released five singles, their debut album A Brief History of Love released in September 2009.

Or, you can just use a few bullet points to capture the key ideas:

• The Big Pink
• Electro-Rock
• 4AD
• Voted Best New Act by NME in 2009
• A Brief History of Love (September 2009)

The version that is more effective for you should be the one that you're able to scan quickly before you give your presentation.

In any case, it's time to put your ideas and creativity to the test, with a role playing assignment. In class, five of you were named as clients, while 10 of you were designated as creatives.

The following five creative briefs were chosen for the assignment (click to download each):
Jet Blue
Threadless
Trader Joe's
Vans
Wallgreens

And, here's what each of you will do with these creative briefs.

CREATIVES
Come up with at least two creative concepts for for each brand (a minimum of ten across the five brands). These concepts should be no longer than a paragraph in length (3-5 sentences) and describe your "big" idea based on meeting the objectives of the single-minded message. At this point, do not worry about how your concept will be applied to the various marketing channels (broadcast, online, print, etc.)—just focus on the ideation process. It's a sales pitch... win the crowd and you win the account.

CLIENTS
Become brand experts... not just on your own brand, but the other four. You will act as the panel for creative evaluation. In representing each brand, you will need to be able to consider each creative concept pitched against your brand goals and offer constructive feedback. Not just, "that's cool," but, "does that idea resonate with our target audiences?".

We'll spend next week's class having the creatives present their ideas to the clients, and the clients providing feedback.

Looking forward to class... let me know if you have any questions!

PS. This week's header is taken from the cover of The Big Pink's A Brief History of Love, which was one of my favorite albums from last year.