MANILA – “You have to go through a lot of crap to get to a good idea,” said David Guerrero at the Better Than Ever Raw School class on July 3.
Held at the BBDO office, the class drew young advertising practitioners who were eager to hear from Guerrero, who gave his Crap Ideas Workshop at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity in June.
During the class, he discussed how crap is an essential part of being good – and how you need a lot of crappy ideas to get a good one. Reinforced by Sturgeon’s Law that 90% of everything is crap and 10% is not, the more crap you do, the better you get; some words of encouragement while one is waiting for ideas to come alive and pop up on a blank sheet of paper.
Guerrero showed how it takes a lot of crappy ideas to get to a good, or preferably, the best one, presenting award-winning advertisements such as the agency’s ‘#Unselfie’ campaign for Yolanda survivors, ‘Labels Against Women’ for Pantene, and ‘It’s More Fun in the Philippines’ for the Department of Tourism.
To make the discussion even lighter and enjoyable, Guerrero conducted an activity that allows you to generate tons of ideas quickly and break through predictable barriers using the ‘crap idea generator’ an online tool at www.crapideas.com.
Given the problem, “How do you stop kids from joining frats?” attendees were able to generate 99 ideas at the time of 22 minutes and 56 seconds.
“If you’re crap at something, pretend to be someone who isn’t,” said Guerrero, rephrasing Neil Gaiman. Best works are tailored and can only come from a thorough deliberation of all its attributes. Ideas – crappy or not – must only be objectively criticized and refined to the greatest possible extent. That’s how one can make sure that the works we are doing are the best we can manage, Guerrero said.
