Rough Trade: The idea doesn’t work as a marker rough? Next!

A few years back I was doing an agency gig with a talented art director, also a freelancer. The assignment was for a long distance telephone provider, and we came up with some solid ideas. We worked up our concepts in semi-rough form, basically marker comps, and presented them to the client.

The client rejected them, every last one. Why? They weren’t presented as virtually finished pieces. Say what? The client was actually pissed. Huh?

Well, that told me something right there: this client couldn’t tell a powerful concept from a panty waist notion if it poured a bucket of Gatorade over her head.

Here’s the ultimate test for any concept. If it doesn’t work as a marker rough – not something that was cobbled up on the computer, but a marker rough of headlines and subheads with the visual idea sketched on tissue – there’s no idea there. Move on.

The last things you want to hear from clients at the concept stage are, “I hate Helvetica,” or, “you really want that shirt in teal?” I’d much rather hear a client utter, “damn that idea sucks. I don’t know why, but it blows.” At least they’re reacting to what matters at the moment – the essential idea. I won’t take it personally, partly because we invested very little by roughly sketching out the idea.

I don’t want to come off old fart-ish here. I love technology. Adore it. But we’ve got entire generations of ad writers, art directors and designers who don’t understand the art of the thumbnail. Mind you, this is in advertising. Go inside a major animation studio like a Pixar and there’s a strong fragrance of “Eau du Marker Magique” in the air and you’ll discover dudes scribbling up a storm. They’re not going to waste their time and valuable resources heating up CGI workstations to create character and story concepts. And how is all this rough housing working out for them? Well, last I looked at the box office numbers, a studio like Pixar isn’t exactly coming up short in the Big Idea department.

Are you on the client side? Here’s a suggestion – for their next presentation to you, challenge your agency people to present marker roughs only. Taking a meeting to work this way gives everyone a little more breathing room to let the stinky ideas die a deserved death while gaining a greater opportunity to unearth those diamonds in the rough.

More on me:  www.BobDevol.com