People respond to advertising and brand design because they want what it’s offering: a better lifestyle, self-improvement, delicious food, odor-free armpits, a cooler home, more fun, and so on. People often think: What’s in it for me?

Maslow arranged the five needs into a pyramid, with physiological needs (air, water, food, sleep, etc.) at the bottom, followed by security needs (safety, stability), social needs (need for love, belonging), ego needs (the need for self-esteem, recognition), and finally at the pinnacle—self-actualization needs (the need for development, creativity).

Will your idea address one of the following for people?

• Respond to a desire or wish fulfillment: a yearning, a craving, an
inclination. For instance, would wearing a brand of fragrance make
someone more attractive? Satisfy a hope with the promise of a positive
outcome?
• Address a need, whether emotional or practical, real or imagined. Or
point to a need people didn’t even realize they had yet?
• Solve a problem with the functional benefit of a product or service.
For instance, a brand of cough medicine would help me get through
my workday.
• Resolve a pain point.
• Provide fun or entertainment: make someone feel something, cry, say
“Aw,” be surprised, inspired, shocked, laugh, or think it’s so entertaining that they’ll share it.
• Provide information or education.
• Provide a utility—a game (think the KFC® “Pocket Franchise” app in
China, where a mobile game put fans in charge of their own virtual
KFC store via WeChat®).
• Advocate. Allows you to be a standup citizen or identify with a just
cause.

Step 1: Preparation
Once you define the goal or problem, you gather information. Research with
an eye towards discovering an insight. Stay open to any enlightening bit that points to a solution you hadn’t anticipated.

Step 2: Initial Ideation (added step)
Analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the data and information. Start to ideate.
An insight into the audience is the ideation launchpad.

Step 3: Incubation Period
Get away from directly working on idea generation. Wallas referred to this
as a stage when a person is “not consciously thinking about the problem.” Taking a break for an incubation period usually allows for fresher thinking.

Draw upon your understanding of contemporary culture and your audience,
the creative brief strategy, the brand, competitors, and your sensibilities.
Think of drawing inspiration from the arts or doodling (semiconscious behaviors, such as doodling, foster incubation). You’re not thinking about
the problem directly; however, your mind is still turning it over (somewhere
in there).

Then, allowing for incubation, they generate a second-round of hopefully fresher or more focused ideas.

Step 4: Illumination and Idea Generation
In an interview with Big Think, George Lois, a creative director, agency
owner, author, and graphic designer, said that creativity is the act of discovery. The idea should be discoverable. “Once you understand the problem, the answer is there, floating by—you have to grab it,” Lois said.

Generating several substantially different ideas is best practice. Variations
on one idea won’t go far if the person making the final decision doesn’t appreciate the core idea.

Step 5: Verification: Crystallizing the Idea
Once you generate an idea, you need to assess it for its strategic creativity.
Critique:
• Does the idea have a benefit?
• Does it address people’s aspirations or need for fulfillment?
• Is the core idea fresh?
• Is the idea in accord with the brand’s larger narrative?
• Would people engage with it or share it?

Creative people observe. Whether it’s noticing how shadows fall or how someone eats pizza. Everything is content. And we all know content is king.
Drawing upon observations of the natural world, built environment, human
behaviors, and life experiences may be the richest techniques for finding
ideas.

Ideas can stem from how people do what they do—how we eat a sandwich cookie, how we wear glasses on our heads, or how we tug at our underwear. The audience’s response should be something like: “Yes, that’s how it is. You know me!”

Is there a pop culture moment the brand can co-opt? This type of solution
must happen quickly to stay current. The TikTok newsroom explains how a
TikTok creator can inspire a brand:

A vibe might be hard to define, but the TikTok community knows one when
they see one. On TikTok, one creator’s vibe can inspire a resonant moment
across pop culture, spreading from the TikTok community to the rest of the
Internet and IRL world. Enter Nathan Apodaca, a long time TikTok creator
using the handle @420doggface208. Combining the unlikely ingredients of
skateboarding, cranberry juice, and the classic jam “Dreams” by Fleetwood
Mac, Nathan’s “morning vibe” took the internet by storm, growing into a
heart-warming moment and changing his life forever.

BBDO’s goal was to make Snickers® relevant again with a global campaign. To do that they returned to a product truth: “Hunger satisfaction.” Gianfranco Arena, Executive Creative Director, BBDO New York, and his team landed on the idea that when you’re hungry, your personality changes—you might become short-tempered, others might become light-headed or loopy. They used celebrities, such as Aretha Franklin and Betty White, to represent the alter egos of hungry people, using larger than life people to exaggerate how hunger affects people’s moods and the satisfaction of eating a Snickers.

The now long-running “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign is
very effective. Global agencies around the world did bespoke versions of the
campaign, working with BBDO. “The idea is so relevant to so many people
in so many different situations that it makes it incredibly flexible. We can
all identify with moments where hunger has caused us to be off our game,”

Consumers even created their own versions of the idea. Exaggeration can be humorous as well as memorable. Start with a grain of truth; then, stretch it to a ridiculous extreme.

When you bring facts or data to life—visually, as an installation, with music, any surprising way—people might respond. This is where data or good research can be very helpful.

Remember …
• Think: Is the idea empathetic?
• Try thinking about a multisensory experience.
• Make it optimistic and kind.
• Think of ways humor disarms people with exaggeration or the
unexpected.
• Ask questions—some dissenting, some challenging.
• Combine unrelated things, such as potholes and pizza.
• Can a weakness become a unique selling point or asset? Remember
DDB’s work for Volkswagen®’s Beetle® in the 1950s and 1960s, for
example, “It’s ugly but it gets you there.”

Everyone can have an idea. “To think we don’t have ideas, is an idea.”