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A good short story is, among other things, a highly organised system. Its parts feel in connection with one another. There’s very little waste or randomness. Many decisions have been made along the way, by different means, some conscious, some not. It feels fraught with intention, full of direction. It doesn’t necessarily know what it is, but it

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Extrapolate this out, and you’ll find the best agencies have a department of chameleons. Art directors that write. Writers that paint. Designers with $10,000 cameras. Creative directors with three unfinished screenplays and novels sitting in their bottom drawer. (We’ll get to them one day. One day...)

What this means for an agency is that there are... See more

That’s my problem with most “strategy lines” – they assume uniform interpretation of the abstract.

This is an uncomfortable truth. Retrofitting the beginning to fit the ending sounds like cheating (which it isn’t.) It sounds a bit chaotic (which it is.) It’s not something we speak about in public. It’s not an easy process to sell. It’s creative and intellectual alchemy.

In either case, the big idea is not another small logical step on the journey. It’s a giant imaginative leap. The big idea transports you to somewhere else entirely. You know you’ve landed in a good place, but it’s not where you expected to end up when you set off. It’s exciting. It feels right. But you’re not entirely sure how you got here.

So you... See more

Without even mentioning the words ‘Gestalt theory’, Bill Bernbach spoke of ideas working as aesthetic wholes:

Most readers come away from their reading not with a clear, precise, detailed registration of its contents on their minds, but rather with a vague, misty idea which was formed as much by the pace, the proportions, the music of the writings

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