The Toast is a fun exercise. It is a good alternative to brainstormimg. I am sure using the Toast as a basis, more variations can be developed to encourage creative solutions to problems. Thanks for sharing the exercise.

Actually, I believe in most cases the magic of the best advertising does the same thing for consumers as it does for award juries. I just think the “that’s pretty neat” reaction for the target audience, when the ad creators are playing fair, leads to business results; improved brand preference or actual sales.

Re awards, ad people can’t win with me. If you think awards are important, shame on you. If you think they are not important, shame on you. I want you to be motivated by what ever it takes to get you inspired. If that’s recognition, fine. Because doing work that is truly different; to stand out, get remembered and elicit action takes a ton of creativeness. So I want you juiced. I just don’t want you to let your priorities get out of order.

As for my little toast exercise, here the creative person who went over the line had to eat something pretty disgusting. In real life going over the creative line can be anything from having actors in commercials overact (not egregious, but still not good) to doing stuff that just plain hurts business or careers, directly or otherwise. So what are the consequences for advertising creatives who create irresponsibly - from over-the-top talent direction to developing work solely to win awards? They will limit their career path, that’s what. They won’t get hired by the top creative directors, to create for legitimate brands, to do work that actually makes a difference. So they’ll keep creating gratuitous work for judges. I think I’d rather eat road kill on toast.

[To blog readers who aren’t in advertising, don’t think ad people are entirely unaccountable. There’s actually much good that comes from their desire to accumulate shiny little trophies. From my experience in other fields (a good portion of my work these days) maybe there should be something like ad awards to bring out the creative juice in these industries. Because when the creators play fair, the extra motivation actually can make the ideas better, which can drive business.]