COMPUTERARTS.CREATIVEBLOQ.COMSEPTEMBER 2019 IDEAS
“BEST-SELLER IDEAS
TEND TO STAND OUT
UNDER SCRUTINY”
JIM SUTHERLAND FOUNDER, STUDIO SUTHERL&
As a fiercely independent agency that beats
its own drum away from the big networks,
Wieden+Kennedy prides itself on being
wonderfully off-kilter both in its culture and its
work – and the agency has made weirdness work
for brands as diverse as Old Spice, KFC and its
founding client, Nike.
“But it’s getting harder for us to be weird,”
admits Hoffman. “You need a balance of right and
left: if you don’t you’re in trouble. We use phrases
like ‘the right kind of crazies’ and ‘ship of fools’ to
describe the agency, to remind ourselves not to be
too serious, have fun, and be human.”
For Hoffman, it all boils down to finding a
relevant ‘truth’ about the brand in question to
build from. Fabricate something just to fit a brief
and you’re building a campaign on quicksand in
an age where consumers are demanding substance
and authenticity.
“We really shouldn’t get out of the starting
gates until we know that truth. I’m not saying it’s
easy to find, or to execute, but if you bank on truth
you stand a better chance of pulling it off, and you
know that it’s right,” says Hoffman. “It’s always
there, you just have to dig hard to find it.”WHERE TO FIND A GREAT IDEA
Finding a killer idea is certainly no mean feat,
and it often takes an open mind to spot potential
and bring it to the surface. Sutherland’s creative
process involves hundreds of scribbled ideas: “It’s
about experimenting and testing out all sorts of
approaches,” he explains. “I constantly add new
thoughts and ideas in notebooks, on scraps of
paper and so on.”
In order to whittle all these rough starting
points down into ideas that have legs, the next step
is to talk them all through and determine which
have the most potential to “grow and flex”, as
Sutherland puts it.
“Best-seller ideas tend to stand out under
scrutiny,” he explains. “Keep looking, talking and
reflecting. You should work hard, but it shouldn’t
be hard work – it should be good fun. It’s like a pig