Killed Ideas to Give Your Creative Masterpiece New Life
February 16th, 2009 By Steve Hall
OK so you’ve landed the perfect client for whom you’ve been jonesing for years. They’re about to launch a new product line and have a huge marketing budget to support the launch. (OK, just pretend the economy doesn’t suck and they actually do have a huge marketing budget.)
You concept the most amazing idea you’ve ever concepted and present it to them. During the presentation they praise it. They love it. They fawn all over it. They pontificate about how it will introduce a sea change within their industry and how it will skyrocket the company to greatness. Everyone fist bumps each other at the end of the meeting and the client promises to call with final approval the next morning.
Then…
The call comes…
And the client kills the idea. It’s not that they really wanted to. They loved it just as much as you but, as we all know, there are other forces involved when it comes to a campaign getting the green light.
But that fact doesn’t make you feel any better. After you run through the entire agency shouting expletives and asking everyone on your team, “Why? Why? Why?”, you contemplate calling the client to unleash a tirade of anger until you realize they, too, wanted the campaign approved.
And then…you read this blog post and find out about Killed Ideas, a project which glorifies great creative and gives your ingenious idea a place to shine and be seen. Suddenly, you feel much better and you want to hug your client. OK so maybe you don’t feel that great but at least you feel good your amazing idea will be seen by others.
Yes, people. Killed Ideas loves your…killed ideas. We want your dream campaigns. We want that diamond in the rough print ad you created for that local jeweler or that amazing television campaign you created for that multi-national corporation.
Beginning February 24, you are encouraged to submit your killed ideas to killedideas.com for potential inclusion in Killed Ideas Volume 1, a book published by Blurb and edited by Adrants Editor Steve Hall. Fifty of the best killed ideas will be selected for the book which will be published in May.
As killed ideas are submitted, some of the more interesting and quirky ones will be featured here on the Killed Ideas blog and on Twitter by following @killedideas.
While there many justifiable reasons ideas get killed, sometimes greatness meets a premature death. With Killed Ideas, we hope to give your idea and others new and ever lasting life. So if you’ve got great ideas, dig them out and send them over to us right away!
This is stupid. I keep my killed ideas to myself in the hope I can use them for something else later. Isn’t that why we don’t throw out old notebooks?
You’d have to have a big ego and zero brains to get involved in this.
Hey pretty cool contest steve. but what are the actual prizes you’re offering for our ideas? do we get a cut of the book profits perhaps?
Cool concept. Wondering how the legal issues of agency contracts (them owning the intellectual property of the ideas we creatives generate while in their employ) affects what I can enter? Darn it.
This is a great ideah and I am looking forward to the results.
Sort of agree with Kevin above, but like the idea of sharing… so I’ll share a story about someone else’s killed idea.
Cookie Monster: Jim Henson drew some monsters eating various snacks for a General Foods commercial in 1966. The commercial was never used, but Henson recycled one of the monsters (the “Wheel-Stealer”) for an IBM training video in 1967 and again for a Fritos commercial in 1969. By that time, he had started working on Sesame Street and decided this monster would have a home there.
Read the full story on CNN: http://tinyurl.com/ddlnkq
This is a cool idea, but would need more thought and background work.
1- What would your client say if all this work that was “too OTT” for their management now shows them off in a bound book to be “ball-less”
2- Surely as a frustrated creative with a matching massive ego, you would want to run this ad in a far and distant unknown publication (at the agency cost with the nervous nod from the client who is eager to test the bold concept) and then enter in the Cannes Lions, just to rub their noses in it …and of course gloat!
3- The idea would most likely be the property of the agency, and if the concept is a one-of-a-kind, then they would want to try to sell it to another client as an eye-opening award winner…
Definitely needs some more thought me thinks…
Excellent idea Steve. Most of my killed ideas were tailor-made to specific clients, so once killed, they were pretty much dead, dead, dead.