Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This

Figure 12.1 You know it's a good idea when the ad (top) becomes a product (bottom). whipple5dumbways

12Why Pay for Attention When You Can Earn It?Or, Advertising so Interesting, People Go Out of Their Way to See It

“In the future, advertising will be like sex. Only losers will pay for it.”

Jon Bond, the founder of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners, made this prediction in 2010. He turned out to be at least half right. Advertisers might still pay a lot of money for your creative time, and for production budgets, but more and more they're expecting you to come up with ideas that earn attention without having to pay a lot for media. They're expecting you to create experiences that'll generate shareable content. In some cases, they're hoping you'll invent new platforms or applications, ideas that build preference and loyalty through utility rather than messaging. In short, they want creative ideas designed for a world that's more and more digital.

But remember, not all the work you do for clients has to be digital, but it sure has to understand digital. Your ideas need to reflect and inspire the digital behaviors now practiced by everyone. In the next section we'll take a look at the kind of ideas that will win in the new marketplace.

• Ideas that start with something people are ...