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      • What Alternative
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    • Master the Art of Headline Writing!
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    • 5 Brands with Amazing Copywriting Teams
    • Master Hard and Soft CTAs for Superior Sales Writing
    • The Ultimate Checklist for Blog Copywriters
    • 10 Mistakes Even Experienced Copywriters Make
    • Read These 4 Books to Become a Better Copywriter
    • Sales Writing: How to Create Attention Grabbing Headlines
    • How to Create Persuasive Sales Copy
    • Proven Copywriting Methods Emotional Advertising
    • How to Write Good Copy : Preparation Techniques
    • Copywriting Secrets: 8 Powerful Ways to Add Proof and Credibility
    • Copywriting Cheat Sheet: Write Powerful Copy Quickly and Easily
    • Copywriting Insights: How to Test Ad Copy for Best Results
    • Write Effective Ad Copy: No Fail Secrets and Tips
    • What Never to Do When Writing Compelling Copy for Sales
    • How to Write Copy That Sells – Use Benefits
    • 7 Ways to Improve Your Copy Immediately
    • A Day in the Life of a Copywriter
    • Coffee, Copywriting, and Freedom
    • Copy is Everywhere
    • Direct Response Copy Sells
    • The Pros and Cons of Copywriting Part–Time
    • Three Tips to Write Copy that Converts
    • Two of the Biggest Mistakes Beginning Copywriters Make
    • Why Copywriting Makes a Great Second Career
    • Why I Love Being a Copywriter
    • Landing Pages that Work - Copy that Converts
    • The Next Big Idea: Creative Advertising Ideation
    • Copywriting Certificates: Online Copywriting Classes
    • The Advertising Museum Tokyo: Copywriting Fun
    • How to Tell a Great Brand Story
    • 20 Great Headlines from Classic Ads
    • Top London Ad Agencies
    • The Top 10 Best Copywriting Books
    • Copywriting Courses & Resources
    • Copywriting Formulas to Write Faster: AIDA, Problem Solution and More
    • Sales Letters: Broken Down by Parts
    • Copywriting Research Tips, Tricks and Secrets
    • How to Grow Your Email List
    • What is Creative Advertising
    • Ideation and How to Find the Next Big Idea
    • Creative Advertising Methods and Madness
    • Paths to Becoming a Copywriter
    • Great Print Ads - Creative Advertising That Rocks
    • Great Outdoor Ads - Creative Advertising That Works
    • Underground Ads - Creative Advertising in England
    • 10 Great Email Subject Lines
    • Email Marketing Types: Long, Short, Creative and More
    • Email Copywriting Tactics
    • How to Grow Your Email List
    • Autoresponder Copywriting: How to Do It Write
    • Copywriting Examples: Social Media
    • 6 Free Copywriting Courses
    • Where You Can Get a Copywriting Certificate Online: Copywriting Training
    • Top American Ad Schools
    • 10 Ad Schools for College Graduates
    • These Direct Response Letters And Campaigns Delivered Great Results - Yours Can Too
    • How To Break Into Advertising
    • The Creative Advertising Bible: The Value Of Great Guerrilla Ad Campaigns (With Examples)
    • Content Writing Vs. Copywriting: What's the Difference?
    • SEO Copywriting: How Does Search Engine Optimization Factor Into Copywriting?
    • Show and Tell: 7 Ways to Write Strong Video Copy
    • Short, Sweet, and It Sells: How to Trim the Fat From Your Sales Copy
    • Digital VS Print Ad Copy: How to Write the Difference
    • How to Craft the Ultimate Product Description
    • B2B VS B2C Sales Copy: 6 Crucial Differences You Should Know About
    • The Next Big Idea: Creative Advertising Ideation
    • Email Marketing: 12 Tips for Getting It Right
    • Landing Pages and Lead Magnets: Everything You Need to Know
    • How to Do Better Creative Advertising: Why and How It Works
    • Where to Take Copywriting Classes in the San Francisco Bay Area
    • Why San Francisco Business Owners Need to Know Copywriting
    • How to Break Into the Copywriting Industry
    • What Everybody Should Know About Online Advertising Portfolio
    • Copywriting for Beginners: 10 Quick Tips
    • Don’t Let Imposter Syndrome Keep You from Writing Great Copy
    • How to Design Great Digital Ads
    • Ad Campaigns: Nike Just Do It
    • Copywriting Examples: Google Ads
    • Best Copywriting Resources: Magazines, Organizations and More
    • How to Practice Copywriting
    • How to Build a Brand With Copywriting
    • Copywriting Grammar Review: 10 Common Grammar Mistakes
    • Copywriting Grammar Review: When to Use Commas
    • Our Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization Copywriting Tips
    • Urgent, Useful, Unique, Ultra-Specific: How to Boost Your Copywriting with the Four U’s
    • Great Ad Campaigns: Apple 1984
    • Great Ad Campaigns: “Mikey Likes It”
    • Great Ad Campaigns: "When EF Hutton Talks"
    • Great Ad Campaigns: "We Make Money the Old Fashioned Way"
    • Great Ad Campaigns: Daisy
    • Great Ad Campaigns: Absolut Vodka
    • Top San Francisco Ad Agencies
    • Top 6 1960s Ad Campaigns and What You Can Learn From Them
    • Top 10 1970s Ad Campaigns and What You Can Learn From Them
    • Top 7 1980s Ad Campaigns and What You Can Learn From Them
    • Top 10 1990s Ad Campaigns and What You Can Learn From Them
    • Why Does Creative Advertising Matter?
    • How Can AI Copywriting Tools Make Me a Better Copywriter?
    • Why Should You Enter Advertising Contests as a Copywriter?
    • 10 Tips for Writing Captivating Social Media Copy
    • Tips for Improved Direct Response Copywriting
    • Copywriting Pro-Tip: Highlighting Benefits Over Feature
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The Next Big Idea: Creative Advertising Ideation

The Next Big Idea: Creative Advertising Ideation
Are you trying to come up with the next big idea in advertising before the competition. This article examines what that idea could look like.

What if you could create the future instead of simply trying to predict it?
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Plenty of businesses struggle to create a better version of someone else's good idea. But it's far better to come up with the next big idea yourself, especially when you work in advertising.


How, then, can you come up with creative advertising ideas? Keep reading to discover our complete guide!
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Big Idea, Small Description
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Coming up with the next big idea may sound intimidating. However, you don't have to reinvent the wheel here. You can always look to other good ideas and find out what they have in common.


And here is something all great advertising ideas have in common: you can describe them in a sentence or two. A big idea usually isn't complex or overly nuanced. Instead, it is something that speaks more universally to audiences all around the world.

Of course, things may get complex when it comes to bringing that idea to life (more on this later). But the idea in question should be both innovative and straightforward.

Return to BasicsYou're not completely on your own when it comes to creative advertising. Instead, you get to rely on the communication strategy and creative brief describing your advertising campaign.

In other words, no great idea arrives fully-formed. Instead, marketers must consider key aspects of the company's demographic and make sure that the new ad helps move the company's overall marketing goals forward.

Ultimately, the communication strategy and creative brief give you some boundaries for your creative vision. The trick to great advertising is developing a killer idea within those boundaries.

Go Big or Go Home
Sometimes, the biggest obstacle to developing a big idea is simple: the team can't always agree on what makes an idea "big" or not.

In order to understand what a great idea is, we must understand what a great idea is not. For example, it is not enough to take existing advertising ideas and do small things such as adjustments to color or font. Or if you simply swap one CTA for another: trust us, audiences notice that and think it's annoying.

Here's a concept you can take to the bank: whatever the next big idea is, it is guaranteed to be something original and innovative. And if you are focusing on simply tweaking your past work, you may never develop a unique idea the world has never seen.

The Importance of The Next Big IdeaOur guide is devoted to helping you generate big ideas and then bring them to life. Before we get into how to do this, though, we need to ask a simple question: why is it so important to focus on these big ideas each year?

On the most basic level, it's important to generate new ideas to discover what works and what does not work for your audience. Consumer tastes and demographics change over time, and trying new ideas out is the best way to make sure your business still has its fingers on the pulse.

Additionally, experimenting with new ideas is the best way to discover something unexpected that really resonates with your audience.

Working on big ideas can also transform your marketing campaign. After all, it takes only one good idea to bring all of the disconnected elements of your campaign together.

Finally, big ideas on one channel or platform can give you a better idea of what will work on other channels and other platforms. In short, focusing on the next big ideas helps your company constantly improve its ideas and advertisements. Without such a focus, your business may never grow to its full potential.


Work Around the Problem
Here's another quality all great ideas have: every great idea is a solution. And in order to develop a great solution, you must first understand the problem.
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That's why you and your team need to start with a problem statement. What is the problem that your audience is facing? How does your latest advertising idea help to address that particular problem?


All of this should organically lead to a CTA for your customers. You can track customer response to the CTA as a way of tracking how effective your advertisement has been. And don't be discouraged: it may take some trial and error before you discover exactly what your audience is looking for.

Get a Team
We sometimes associate really great ideas with singular figures. For example, you might mentally credit Steve Jobs for the revolutionary iPod advertising back in the day. But trust us: Steve had an entire team to develop those ideas and bring them to life.

And you're going to need your own good team in order to brainstorm ideas. It's okay if it's a small team: you really just need a team lead, a facilitator, a note-taker, and however many extra people to generate ideas.

It's a bit of a cliche, but make sure your team knows there are no "bad" ideas when you're brainstorming. You never know which off the wall concept might become your latest hit advertisement!


Directed Brainstorming
If you're not careful, a brainstorming session can go off the rails very quickly. That's why you need to set a few ground rules and also make sure the team lead and facilitator keep everyone else on track.

First, make sure everyone gathers at the same time and on the same day. Try to secure a room that is comfortable and has white boards and other surfaces where everyone can write down ideas.

Second, lay down the ground rules. This may include things like only having one person speak at a time and having the team hold off commentary until everyone is done speaking.


Third, enforce those rules as needed. You may have some team members challenge your authority early on, and it's important to crack down on that.
Beyond these ground rules, you should encourage everyone to have fun. The more they feel like this is a safe creative space, the better ideas you will get from your team.


Keep It Informal
No matter how well the team knows each other, some people may hesitate to bring up their ideas. This is usually because they feel nervous about collaborating in a very formal environment.

That's why you should try to make things feel chill and informal. Consider having everyone participate in short games and other ice-breaking activities.

These activities help build trust because the team gets to know each other better. And they are likelier to open up about their ideas if they have a positive relationship with everyone involved.


From Individuals to Small GroupsThere is no "wrong" way to collaboratively develop creative advertising ideas. But the method we recommend starts with individuals and expands to small groups.

With this system, you start out by giving individuals enough time (usually thirty minutes or less) to write their ideas down on a piece of paper. At the end of this time, the facilitator should post all of the ideas where the rest of the team can see them.

Next, have individuals present their ideas. And after presentations, have the rest of the team discuss those ideas.

After that, split the team into small groups and give each team multiple ideas. Their job is to collectively improve these big ideas by bouncing smaller ideas off of one another.


Narrow It Down
By now, you should have plenty of good ideas flying back and forth. Here comes the hard part: you need to narrow it down to the top two or top three ideas.

For some creative people, this can be the hard part. That's because if your idea wasn't selected, it can be difficult to drop it and put all of your energy behind another idea.

But this is the essence of good collaboration. And there is a place in the process for skeptics and critics: after all, the team must verify that the winning ideas fit the communication strategy and overall creative brief.

This is also the last chance the team has to punch up any advertisement ideas as needed. For example, if there is a way to make the CTA tighter or the problem clearer, now is the time to refine everything until it is "just right."


Bring It to Life
At this point, bringing everything to life may very well be the easy part. Once you have the ideas in place, you'll need to generate storyboards and scripts that help to flesh everything out.

The same team should help develop storyboards, scripts, and other creative materials. Think of it this way: if you still need to convince someone to get the green light for your ideas, your team can make the presentation of these advertising ideas that much more persuasive.

What's Next?Now you know how to develop the next big idea. But do you know who can help you get your ideas out there?

We specialize in finding talented writers and guiding them towards their dream jobs. If you'd like to become a copywriter, all you have to do is contact us today!
FREE COURSE
  • Home
  • Courses
    • Copywriting 101
    • How to Create an Advertising Portfolio From Scratch
    • Direct Response Copywriting
    • 360 Copywriting Online
  • ABOUT
  • CONTACT
  • BLOG
    • Copywriting Lessons from David Ogilvy
    • 9 Copywriting Lessons from Robert Collier
    • 9 Copywriting Lessons From John Caples
    • 8 Copywriting Lessons from John Powers
    • Scientific Advertising: 10 Copywriting Lessons from Claude Hopkins
    • A Review of Current AI Copywriting Tools
    • Top San Francisco Ad Agencies
    • Learn How To Write Conversationally To Engage Your Audience
    • Top Skills for a Copywriter
    • Launch A Career In Advertising With These Top Portfolio Schools
    • UX Copywriting and Short Copy ​
    • Discover How To Write Killer Copy That Converts
    • What is Copywriting? >
      • What Alternative
    • 10 Great Headlines from Classic Ads
    • Why Tone Can Make or Break Your Copy
    • How to Use Statistics, Facts and Quotes to Craft Compelling Copy
    • Great Copywriters Use Verbal Imagery to Tell a Story
    • Master the Art of Headline Writing!
    • Here’s How to Get Portfolio-Building Copywriting Gigs
    • What Volkswagen’s ’Think Small’ Teaches Copywriters
    • 5 Brands with Amazing Copywriting Teams
    • Master Hard and Soft CTAs for Superior Sales Writing
    • The Ultimate Checklist for Blog Copywriters
    • 10 Mistakes Even Experienced Copywriters Make
    • Read These 4 Books to Become a Better Copywriter
    • Sales Writing: How to Create Attention Grabbing Headlines
    • How to Create Persuasive Sales Copy
    • Proven Copywriting Methods Emotional Advertising
    • How to Write Good Copy : Preparation Techniques
    • Copywriting Secrets: 8 Powerful Ways to Add Proof and Credibility
    • Copywriting Cheat Sheet: Write Powerful Copy Quickly and Easily
    • Copywriting Insights: How to Test Ad Copy for Best Results
    • Write Effective Ad Copy: No Fail Secrets and Tips
    • What Never to Do When Writing Compelling Copy for Sales
    • How to Write Copy That Sells – Use Benefits
    • 7 Ways to Improve Your Copy Immediately
    • A Day in the Life of a Copywriter
    • Coffee, Copywriting, and Freedom
    • Copy is Everywhere
    • Direct Response Copy Sells
    • The Pros and Cons of Copywriting Part–Time
    • Three Tips to Write Copy that Converts
    • Two of the Biggest Mistakes Beginning Copywriters Make
    • Why Copywriting Makes a Great Second Career
    • Why I Love Being a Copywriter
    • Landing Pages that Work - Copy that Converts
    • The Next Big Idea: Creative Advertising Ideation
    • Copywriting Certificates: Online Copywriting Classes
    • The Advertising Museum Tokyo: Copywriting Fun
    • How to Tell a Great Brand Story
    • 20 Great Headlines from Classic Ads
    • Top London Ad Agencies
    • The Top 10 Best Copywriting Books
    • Copywriting Courses & Resources
    • Copywriting Formulas to Write Faster: AIDA, Problem Solution and More
    • Sales Letters: Broken Down by Parts
    • Copywriting Research Tips, Tricks and Secrets
    • How to Grow Your Email List
    • What is Creative Advertising
    • Ideation and How to Find the Next Big Idea
    • Creative Advertising Methods and Madness
    • Paths to Becoming a Copywriter
    • Great Print Ads - Creative Advertising That Rocks
    • Great Outdoor Ads - Creative Advertising That Works
    • Underground Ads - Creative Advertising in England
    • 10 Great Email Subject Lines
    • Email Marketing Types: Long, Short, Creative and More
    • Email Copywriting Tactics
    • How to Grow Your Email List
    • Autoresponder Copywriting: How to Do It Write
    • Copywriting Examples: Social Media
    • 6 Free Copywriting Courses
    • Where You Can Get a Copywriting Certificate Online: Copywriting Training
    • Top American Ad Schools
    • 10 Ad Schools for College Graduates
    • These Direct Response Letters And Campaigns Delivered Great Results - Yours Can Too
    • How To Break Into Advertising
    • The Creative Advertising Bible: The Value Of Great Guerrilla Ad Campaigns (With Examples)
    • Content Writing Vs. Copywriting: What's the Difference?
    • SEO Copywriting: How Does Search Engine Optimization Factor Into Copywriting?
    • Show and Tell: 7 Ways to Write Strong Video Copy
    • Short, Sweet, and It Sells: How to Trim the Fat From Your Sales Copy
    • Digital VS Print Ad Copy: How to Write the Difference
    • How to Craft the Ultimate Product Description
    • B2B VS B2C Sales Copy: 6 Crucial Differences You Should Know About
    • The Next Big Idea: Creative Advertising Ideation
    • Email Marketing: 12 Tips for Getting It Right
    • Landing Pages and Lead Magnets: Everything You Need to Know
    • How to Do Better Creative Advertising: Why and How It Works
    • Where to Take Copywriting Classes in the San Francisco Bay Area
    • Why San Francisco Business Owners Need to Know Copywriting
    • How to Break Into the Copywriting Industry
    • What Everybody Should Know About Online Advertising Portfolio
    • Copywriting for Beginners: 10 Quick Tips
    • Don’t Let Imposter Syndrome Keep You from Writing Great Copy
    • How to Design Great Digital Ads
    • Ad Campaigns: Nike Just Do It
    • Copywriting Examples: Google Ads
    • Best Copywriting Resources: Magazines, Organizations and More
    • How to Practice Copywriting
    • How to Build a Brand With Copywriting
    • Copywriting Grammar Review: 10 Common Grammar Mistakes
    • Copywriting Grammar Review: When to Use Commas
    • Our Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization Copywriting Tips
    • Urgent, Useful, Unique, Ultra-Specific: How to Boost Your Copywriting with the Four U’s
    • Great Ad Campaigns: Apple 1984
    • Great Ad Campaigns: “Mikey Likes It”
    • Great Ad Campaigns: "When EF Hutton Talks"
    • Great Ad Campaigns: "We Make Money the Old Fashioned Way"
    • Great Ad Campaigns: Daisy
    • Great Ad Campaigns: Absolut Vodka
    • Top San Francisco Ad Agencies
    • Top 6 1960s Ad Campaigns and What You Can Learn From Them
    • Top 10 1970s Ad Campaigns and What You Can Learn From Them
    • Top 7 1980s Ad Campaigns and What You Can Learn From Them
    • Top 10 1990s Ad Campaigns and What You Can Learn From Them
    • Why Does Creative Advertising Matter?
    • How Can AI Copywriting Tools Make Me a Better Copywriter?
    • Why Should You Enter Advertising Contests as a Copywriter?
    • 10 Tips for Writing Captivating Social Media Copy
    • Tips for Improved Direct Response Copywriting
    • Copywriting Pro-Tip: Highlighting Benefits Over Feature