Thoughts on finding that new creative idea
Well, there are usually two clear-cut ways to push an idea. One, you keep slashing bits off, whittling away the fat to get to its purest form. Or two, you blow it up to brobdingnagian proportions, expanding it to a zeppelin-sized state of itself where only the most characteristic features can find the space to exist. Either way, you attempt to go beyond what you initially thought was important, until you find yourself on the fringes. Here, seemingly disparate ideas can combine more fluidly with each other to create something more original and memorable.
In the early 60’s, at Pennsylvania State University, there was an experiment on the mating rituals of White Leghorn chickens called ‘Effects of the Morphological Variations of Chicken Models on the Sexual Responses of Cocks’ by Dr. Martin Schein and Dr. Edward Hale. The two wanted to see how male chickens identified a potential mate by taking away gradually more and more of a dummy female they’d introduced them to. Initially, the fake female was a life-like replica of an average Leghorn. They took away the wooden feet, and the males were still interested. They took away the legs and wings of the carved figure, no change. They eventually took away the whole body so that the model was just a neck and head, and the males still considered the counterfeit a viable candidate.
Why is this relevant? Because the creative process follows a similar path. You can’t know what’s important to an idea until you’ve deliberately taken it too far. You probably would’ve assumed that chickens thought wings were important, or bodies, but nope. You’re never going to know what’s important, what’s essential in your idea until you’ve messed it up, flipped it around, scrambled it and unscrambled it. Take the head off your campaign, take the legs off, put the top at the bottom and see what shape it takes. You might not consciously know, or be in control of, what makes your idea work, so you have to play around with it.
Fashion graduate, Fredrik Tjærandsen's wild idea got him featured in British Vogue.
In high fashion runways, the models come down in all kinds of nonsense. It’s common for the images to be mocked by people who aren’t in the industry… because they usually look incredibly stupid. But while there’s a woman sashaying down the catwalk with a poly bag on her head, a dead goldfish in the see-through heel of her platform boot, a kettle plug for a necklace and an actual cod for a codpiece, the forced ridiculousness of the designer’s vision could reveal something new and influential. Of course nobody is going to wear this stuff, but that’s not the point. The looseness opens up possibilities and inspires all the real ideas. The cut of the trousers could be in every shop in the world within weeks. The texture. The fabric. The sewing pattern of a hem.
If the designer had stopped before they got to the wild ideas, they’d undoubtedly have missed a few of the really good ones too.
With Vinnie Jones giving CPR to a guy ‘hard and fast’ to the highly-appropriate tempo and lyrics of the Bee Gees’ 1977 disco smash Stayin’ Alive? Of course you do, because it’s genius.
Who could’ve ever imagined that any of those individual elements would combine in any way whatsoever, let alone in a campaign that’s saved countless lives.
And that’s the very point. This ad didn’t prosper in spite of its seemingly unconnected elements. It prospered because of them.
The human mind clings to these weird connections because they’re usually something it’s never conceived of before. And isn’t that at the heart of what we’re all trying to do? In science, fashion, brand or advertising, there’s always something to be said for pushing it further than you thought it could go.
Otherwise who knows what brilliant idea you’ve left behind.
