Deep looks into creative thinking
The book *Kribbeln im Kopf* offers a new brain tool for advertisers and clients
The book "Kribbeln im Kopf" offers a new brain tool for advertisers and clientsBy Andreas Panzeri The new book "Kribbeln im Kopf" by Mario Pricken can be described as an ideas coach. His creative cookbook for practical use is aimed at teams in advertising agencies and communication professionals. It focuses on methods for developing lead and campaign ideas.
This almost 300-page creative bible contains no advice on designing creative layouts or texts. Instead, the textbook, written for communication professionals, spans a useful and meaningful arc from briefing to idea evaluation. In "Tingling in the head", idea generation is structured by a clicking questionnaire with 200 questions that can "bring exciting impulses to every meeting".
The author has worked out and formalized these questions from 10,000 award-winning campaigns. For example, he asks: How can the product advantage be presented without words? What would nobody dare to say about the product? What images are created if the description of the product benefits is taken literally?
The answers to the 200 questions are visualized in the form of well-known advertisements, posters and commercials. For example, dogs sitting on a tree like cats in an advertisement for Whiskas, answering the question: How can a product benefit be presented by turning something familiar into its opposite?
The headline: "Annoy the neighbors, turn it down" advertises a radio station on the poster. This idea arose from the question: How can the benefits of a product or service be emphasized through a contradictory statement?
Finding ideas does not mean evaluating them at the same time
The "Handbook for brilliant ideas" thus provides an "insight into the alchemy of creative thinking". The book makes the thinking strategies of top creatives transparent by basing its content on countless conversations with creative people. "We do what we do best, mostly unconsciously, and creativity is intangible in many ways," say these interviewees such as Stefan Sagmeister, Johan Kramer and PJ Pereira.
Nevertheless, the authors of the book "Kribbeln im Kopf" manage to formulate some tangible tips. For example, a briefing should be written as a declaration of love for a product. Goals should be formulated as questions: How can you design a direct mail so that it conveys the message in the form of a game? The following rule is certainly also correct: Idea generation must be consistently separated from idea evaluation. Or how would you like your ideas to be presented at the next creative meeting? Sabotaged, ridiculed or simply ignored?
Here, the book, which is also provocatively designed in terms of content, advises "opportunity thinking as a mental switch": What would my aunt or Mick Jagger, for example, say about the proposed advertising idea?
It's better to take a break if the meeting stalls
Well-known and therefore hackneyed phrases such as "The client would never accept the idea" are unfortunately still part of the meeting culture in many teams, says author Mario Pricken. Pricken, who lives in Vienna, gained his experience over many years in various agencies and has been running successful creativity training courses for advertisers, designers and clients for four years. And what he also wanted to say to the reader: Stay tuned, because many really new ideas only come 90 minutes after the end of the creative meeting. So take a break if the meeting comes to a standstill.
"Top ideas take time. The more you deal with the product, analyze it, look at it from all perspectives and play with it, the more effortlessly high-quality ideas will flow," Pricken concludes. Anyone who deals intensively with the product and starts a creative meeting with a clear formulation of objectives has already covered most of the way to a solution. This is demonstrated in the book with the systematic analysis of more than 270 award-winning campaigns from all over the world, in which the thinking strategies of advertisers are presented in an easily comprehensible way. The book with ISBN 3-87439-582-0 is published by Verlag Hermann Schmidt, Mainz.
This almost 300-page creative bible contains no advice on designing creative layouts or texts. Instead, the textbook, written for communication professionals, spans a useful and meaningful arc from briefing to idea evaluation. In "Tingling in the head", idea generation is structured by a clicking questionnaire with 200 questions that can "bring exciting impulses to every meeting".
The author has worked out and formalized these questions from 10,000 award-winning campaigns. For example, he asks: How can the product advantage be presented without words? What would nobody dare to say about the product? What images are created if the description of the product benefits is taken literally?
The answers to the 200 questions are visualized in the form of well-known advertisements, posters and commercials. For example, dogs sitting on a tree like cats in an advertisement for Whiskas, answering the question: How can a product benefit be presented by turning something familiar into its opposite?
The headline: "Annoy the neighbors, turn it down" advertises a radio station on the poster. This idea arose from the question: How can the benefits of a product or service be emphasized through a contradictory statement?
Finding ideas does not mean evaluating them at the same time
The "Handbook for brilliant ideas" thus provides an "insight into the alchemy of creative thinking". The book makes the thinking strategies of top creatives transparent by basing its content on countless conversations with creative people. "We do what we do best, mostly unconsciously, and creativity is intangible in many ways," say these interviewees such as Stefan Sagmeister, Johan Kramer and PJ Pereira.
Nevertheless, the authors of the book "Kribbeln im Kopf" manage to formulate some tangible tips. For example, a briefing should be written as a declaration of love for a product. Goals should be formulated as questions: How can you design a direct mail so that it conveys the message in the form of a game? The following rule is certainly also correct: Idea generation must be consistently separated from idea evaluation. Or how would you like your ideas to be presented at the next creative meeting? Sabotaged, ridiculed or simply ignored?
Here, the book, which is also provocatively designed in terms of content, advises "opportunity thinking as a mental switch": What would my aunt or Mick Jagger, for example, say about the proposed advertising idea?
It's better to take a break if the meeting stalls
Well-known and therefore hackneyed phrases such as "The client would never accept the idea" are unfortunately still part of the meeting culture in many teams, says author Mario Pricken. Pricken, who lives in Vienna, gained his experience over many years in various agencies and has been running successful creativity training courses for advertisers, designers and clients for four years. And what he also wanted to say to the reader: Stay tuned, because many really new ideas only come 90 minutes after the end of the creative meeting. So take a break if the meeting comes to a standstill.
"Top ideas take time. The more you deal with the product, analyze it, look at it from all perspectives and play with it, the more effortlessly high-quality ideas will flow," Pricken concludes. Anyone who deals intensively with the product and starts a creative meeting with a clear formulation of objectives has already covered most of the way to a solution. This is demonstrated in the book with the systematic analysis of more than 270 award-winning campaigns from all over the world, in which the thinking strategies of advertisers are presented in an easily comprehensible way. The book with ISBN 3-87439-582-0 is published by Verlag Hermann Schmidt, Mainz.
