Buy a copy of John Hunt’s book to put within reach on the bedside table. Buy a copy to keep next to the tub in the bathroom – permanently. And one on the stove. (And one in your car for “kill myself” traffic.) And a bedroom extra to keep under the pillow as talisman. It really is that good-gorgeoususeful-inspiring-profound. (As you can doubtless tell, I’m quite taken by The Art of the Idea.)

— Tom Peters, Bestselling author

A book review by Mark Tungate

This book is tougher than it looks. At first glance it resembles yet another theorizing tome written by an experienced adman – in this case John Hunt, a giant of South African advertising and worldwide creative director of TBWA. But it soon transpires that the book has little to do with advertising: the word is never mentioned. Instead, “The Art of the Idea” has more in common with Paul Arden’s “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be”. It’s an inspirational tool, a guide to the creative process for when your back’s against the wall.

Hunt is a copywriter and an award-winning playwright, so the short book is stuffed with memorable epigrams: “No-one orders a bouquet of beige flowers”; “Change doesn’t keep regular hours”; “Trust your instincts or they will go away.” Some of the content is familiar – for example the theory that ideas often come to you when you’re thinking about something else. Other sections are more personal – such as Hunt’s musings on the correlation between diversity and creativity.

The copy is clear and lucid, deliberately avoiding doublespeak. Hunt has enough of a sense of humor to realize that fake intellectuals just end up looking dumb. “Original thinking comes from making a complicated thing simple and not the other way around,” he writes. Actually, fake intellectuals are one of book’s many targets.

And here we get to the crux of the matter. “The Art of the Idea” has an edge. Under its cool prose and beautiful illustrations – by the South African artist Sam Nhlengethwa – there’s a sense that Hunt is seeking to vindicate original thinking. The title could just as easily have been “In Defense of the Idea”. Ideas are portrayed as delicate, ephemeral beings that should be given space to thrive. They are allergic to bureaucracy, politics, over-analysis, compromise and bland furnishings.

What’s packaged as gentle pedagogy is in reality a full-throated cry for creative freedom. It is a defense of instinct against statistics, a call for risk-taking, and a protest against expediency. Hunt famously advised Nelson Mandela during the first multiracial South African elections, and allusions to freedom of thought versus closed minds crop up throughout the text: “Free thought is what [authoritarian governments] fear the most.” More broadly, he warns that cold logic applied too early, “can stop dreamers dead in their tracks”. In that respect, the corporate world will get more out of the book than creative types, who will simply say “Yes, yes, very true” and nod their heads sagely in agreement.

Don’t get me wrong – “The Art of the Idea” is not a rant, far less a whine. Hunt’s tone rarely deviates from one of calm reflection, with occasional recourse to the wry aside. But the book is a reminder that ideas are as fragile as bubbles, and that too many people take pleasure in bursting them. Hunt is simply urging all of us to give ideas room to soar and catch the light. “The real value of an idea is to see how far you can push it,” he suggests. In other words, if you’re looking for an early gift for your client, you may just have found it.

Mark Tungate is the author of several books, including Adland: A Global History of Advertising.

This is the 200th post on mad-blog.com. Congratulations and a big hand to all those who have contributed so far. Over 20,000 absolute unique visitors from 134 countries joined us, spending an average of 2:59 minutes on the blog. Over 4,550 people have subscribed to our rss feed. Thanks for all the interest and support.

This is the perfect opportunity to share the most read stories celebrating Media Arts and Disruption. Enjoy and pass them on:

(1) The audience is always right. (by Michael Zorn)

(2) Some brands don‘t like change. Change doesn’t much care. (by Michael Zorn)

(3) Cannes Lions 2009: Who will be the big winners? (by Rob Schwartz)

(4) Disruption is liberation. (by Sven H. Becker)

(5) Let‘s do things we think we cannot do. (by John Hunt)

(6) Change: What business can learn from politics 2.0. (by Frank Striefler)

(7) The age of media arts. (by Lee Clow)

(8) The Zimbabwean Trillion Dollar Campaign. (by Gavin Heron)

(9) Act like lovers do. (by Stefan Schmidt)

(10) adidas Originals: Connection with the original tribe. (by Moritz Kiechle)

(11) Images travel but disruptive ideas thrive. (by Perry Valkenburg)

(12)  The beauty of big. (by Jean-Marie Dru)

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

To commemorate the induction of Michael Jordan into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, Gatorade and TBWA\Chiat\Day in LA launched a series of limited edition “MJ” bottles. These featured beautiful black and white photos of Michael “then, now and forever.” To take these beyond just a packaging idea, they created a large-scale illuminated mural of MJ in a Chicago street basketball court using over 14,000 limited edition Gatorade bottles and 200 large light boxes. Hundreds of fans watched from the city’s streets as the massive MJ lit up, and later millions watched at home as the footage was made into national television spots. So, all you need to make an idea shine is a clever product demonstration and a national hero.

Check out the making of:

And the official TV spot:

Over the years, the Eurostar high-speed train has become the Belgians’ favorite means of transport from Brussels to London. And now, because of the low British pound, London has suddenly become a shopping paradise for Belgians. That’s why TBWA\Brussels came up with a “customized” game of Monopoly.

Remember that great feeling of having the cash and the power to buy even the most expensive shopping streets? This idea was made interactive by turning it into a nationwide game via SMS and billboards. Every single poster had a unique code, and people could buy a poster with virtual money via SMS. As in Monopoly, owners won money when others tried to buy their street. The player who earned the largest amount of money after one week, won. Scores could be followed online. Radio was used to announce the game. The press loved it and sales went through the roof. Why interrupt your audience when you can play with them?

Download your What if.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Kris Govaerts from TBWA\Brussels.

[Show as slideshow]

How an advertising agency fought for press freedom and broke industry records along the way.

As dictators around the world muzzle the media and newspapers confront an uncertain future, the freedom of the press has become one of the hottest topics of 2009. Advertising agency TBWA joined the debate with a disruptive campaign that scooped no less than nine top prizes at the industry’s annual festival in Cannes: a record. It centers on a crusading newspaper, a dictatorship and messages printed on trillion dollar banknotes.

“The story reads like something out of a movie, but it’s painfully real,” says John Hunt, Worldwide Creative Director of TBWA. “The setting is Zimbabwe, where one of the only sources of reliable information is a newspaper called The Zimbabwean, whose journalists are forced to live and work in exile. On top of that, the Mugabe government has slapped a 70 percent import duty on the paper, so very few Zimbabweans can afford to buy it. Needless to say, it has almost no advertising budget.”

TBWA’s South African agency, TBWA\Hunt Lascaris, wanted to publicize the plight of the newspaper while simultaneously criticizing Robert Mugabe’s dysfunctional regime. “Thanks to runaway inflation, Zimbabwean currency literally isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. So we decided that it would be cheaper to print ads on Zimbabwean bills than on regular paper.”

The insight was a perfect fit with TBWA’s “disruption” theory, conceived by its chairman Jean-Marie Dru. Disruption is about overturning conventions to come up with original ideas. In this case, TBWA ignored conventional news channels and turned money into a medium – the symbol of a failed state. After record-breaking inflation Zimbabwe had recently issued the 100 trillion dollar note, whose 14 zeros did not even add up to the price of a loaf of bread.

“Our team found themselves in a seedy part of Johannesburg exchanging a handful of US dollars for trillions of dollars of Zimbabwean cash. At another point we had Zimbabwean friends turning up at the border with refuse bags stuffed with banknotes. One bag was worth about two US dollars.”

Real money is hard to ignore. During the campaign, agency staffers handed out hundreds of high denomination Zimbabwean banknotes in the street. Printed on them was the message: “Fight the regime that has crippled a country”, accompanied by the newspaper’s website address.

TBWA also created the world’s first advertising posters made from genuine banknotes. Giant billboards fluttering with real money made the message dramatically clear. Smaller posters, often located near places that sold The Zimbabwean, allowed people to peel off the bills and show their friends. The agency sent envelopes stuffed with Zimbabwean money to radio DJs, TV presenters, journalists, politicians and other influential figures. Pretty soon, the media was abuzz with the story.

“While a wrinkled dollar bill with a message on it is a simple idea, digital media is incredibly sophisticated and swift,” says Hunt. “People would pass the billboards with their cell phone and take a picture. Then they’d send it out via Twitter or upload it onto their blog. You can guess what happened next: within about 24 hours the story was in newspapers and on websites across the globe. Today, when you have something interesting to say, people will share it.”

The campaign cost less than US$3000, but it was highly effective: a week after it had launched, hits on The Zimbabwean’s website rose from 2,000 a day to more than two million.

The campaign deservedly won the agency’s in-house Disruption Award Grand Prix. More public accolades came at the Cannes Lions 2009 International Advertising Festival, which ended on June 27. The “trillion dollar” campaign won no less than 9 top prizes, including a Grand Prix in the outdoor advertising category and a Gold in the prestigious Titanium category, which recognizes game-changing ideas. It’s the first time in the festival’s 56 years that a single campaign has scooped so many awards.

“The Cannes festival was a recognition that the TBWA method works,” notes Hunt. “What you need in advertising today is a single visceral idea that touches many people, expressed in an intelligent way across different media. At our agency, we call this Disruption supported by the use of Media Arts.”

In the midst of the recession, the campaign also showed that advertising techniques could be used for other purposes than pushing product. “Taken in context with brutal press restrictions in places like Iran and Myanmar, it’s incredibly resonant,” Hunt agrees. “Advertising is the most effective way of supporting a free press, so perhaps this is a timely reminder that our industry doesn’t just exist to create hype.”

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

In a series of four short films, TBWA Worldwide Creative Director John Hunt answers questions about creativity, disruption and media arts. Prepare for inspiring thoughts about instinct, sharing, humour – and coat hangers.

3. It’s not my idea, it’s our idea – John Hunt explains how big egos suffocate creativity and why ideas benefit from being shared.