By A Correspondent
“99% of advertising is bad work,†said Sam Ball, Creative Director , M&C Saatchi as he started the session ‘Misfits and Madmen’  hosted by M&C Saatchi, adding: “A bunch of like minded people in a room is the worst thing in the world for creativity but that is generally how advertising agencies like to operate.†But that is what happens in majority advertising agency. Most of the times, productivity is given more importance than creativity.
Ball noticed that when a group of people work, everyone goes for the happy medium, the dissenters are shut down. The solution suggested by him is ‘Diversity of thought’. “Diversity of thought is bigger than people, we have to inject it in to clients, our processes and inside people,†he said. He gave some examples of diversity of thought from other creative industry which included the structure of the Pixar building, which was built to encourage people to collaborate and not be confined to their own space.
The creative director conducted an experiment where he got 10 people, who would have never have thought of working in the advertising agency. He put them in the creative department and gave all of them the same creative brief. The purpose was to see how people from different background will come up with different ideas. The ‘misfits’ ranged from data manager to investment banker to cage fighter and even a poet. And, during the exercise different creative people will come and talk to them.
The brief given to them was: How do we make a newly brought Converse more appealing to young men and how do we find a way to make them look the way they want quicker. Before showing some of the ideas that the people came up with, he showed a video that captured some of the moments from the experiment as well as a few interviews of the misfit that he took.
He showcased some of the works that the misfits presented. Ball started getting emails from the misfits after the experiment was over. Most of them thanked him for the opportunity and some of them were ready to look at new career options. “That blew me away. 10 random people who never thought of working on the advertising industry, three of them asked for a job,†Ball said. And, the takeaways that from this experiment for Ball was as follows:
:: Be open to ideas of those who know much less than you because they may really know much more.
:: The future belongs to the agencies that inject diversity of thought in to their people and their process
:: Your most extraordinary ideas are not in you, they are all around you.