Technique for Producing Ideas [Paperback]

This booklet (28 pages) was originally published in 1940 and some new material was added twenty years later. The Foreword to the edition I have (published by Waking Lion Press in 2009) was provided by William Bernbach (1911-1982), one-time chairman and CEO of what was Doyle Dane Bernbach, then renowned for many of the greatest ads in the 20th century. The booklet's author, James Webb Young (1886-1973), added a "Prefatory Note" in 1960. His first publication, How To Become An Advertising Man (1963), focuses on core concepts that every ad practitioner and copywriter should know:

o Knowledge of Propositions
o Knowledge of Markets
o Knowledge of Messages
o Knowledge of Message Carriers
o Knowledge of Trade Channels
o Knowledge of How Advertising Works
o Knowledge of The Specific Situation

Today, these core concepts continue to provide the "basics" on which all effective marketing depends when attempting to create or increase demand for the given product and/or service and multi-media advertising is without doubt advertising's most powerful resource. However, for at least the past 75 years, everything begins with a compelling idea.

In A Technique for Producing Ideas, Webb offers what he characterizes as a "simple, five-step formula anyone can use to be more creative in business and in life! " Although the process itself is indeed simple, completing it to achieve the given results is a wholly different matter. Webb's focus is on the process by which to generate ideas. "They appear just as suddenly above the surface of the mind [like a lovely atoll above the surface of a deep blue sea]; and with that same air of magic and unaccountability. But the scientist knows that the South Sea atoll is the work of countless, unseen coral builders, working below the surface of the sea." Keep in mind that Webb developed or encountered this insight decades ago.

The details of the five-step "formula are best revealed in context, within the narrative. I will suggest now, however, that (a) this booklet is by no means relevant only to advertising or even to business in general, and (b) it can help almost anyone to develop more and better ideas when seeking a solution to a problem or an answer to a question. Because Webb thinks and writes so clearly, the booklet offers the additional benefit of helping its reader to reduce (if not eliminate) all the "clutter" in the mind that accumulates relentlessly over time.

Creating idea must be the most difficult part not
only in great invention but also in business or daily
life.
This book offers us simple principles of
the way to creat idea step by step.
I thought that I could do it, it completely
makes sense when I read it long
time ago. It was the same opinion which I have
when I read it this time. It is clear that by implementing
the principles I can make progress to achievement even if I do
not hit upon idea immediately.
Then, all I need to do is "just do it". Whether
you can start gathering information or not would be
the watershed of utilizing this book.

How to Get Ideas and other books on the subject of creative thinking are mainly just elaborations on the core thoughts laid down by James Webb Young. This is a classic read; short, pointed, and truthful. If you are in the business, you will find your hunches confirmed in simple, memorable language. The other books on the subject are very rah-rah; this book just tells it like it is. Not a self-help book, more like an instruction manual for your brain.