True&North's David Clayton: Take Your Creative Idea to a Near-Death Experience

Even in the age of AI, our industry lives and dies by its creative ideas. But if a great idea never sees the light of day, has it ever been this great?

The role of the CMO has expanded significantly. Clients are responsible for profitability and identifying sources of future growth, and agencies must help CMOs sell an idea to executives. Agency partners must deliver ROI on their ideas, mitigate risk, link creativity to business outcomes, and speak in a way that allows executives to listen and fund an idea.

For any agency, generating ideas is just the beginning, the hardest part is selling and delivering them. But many creatives and marketers simply aren't equipped to provide the support and information needed. So, too often, a fantastic idea, a groundbreaking proposition, and hours spent by an agency's top talent are wasted because they fail to convince the client.

To gain senior management support and ensure a project is robust enough to withstand a myriad of future challenges, big ideas need to be interviewed before they are presented.

This requires a shift in industry mindset from “coming up with big ideas” to “making big ideas happen”.

Instead of conducting a post-mortem analysis of what went wrong after a project fails, agency leaders need to completely reverse their approach and anticipate what could go wrong up front.

A pre-mortem is a very effective strategy

I suggest a pre-mortem. This exercise asks teams to imagine that a project has failed, then work backwards to determine the potential cause of that failure. Instead of asking project team members what could go wrong, the Pre-Mortem imagines that it's already over and that everything went as badly as you could have feared. He then asks why.

The process allows everyone to think pessimistically without fear of being fired. This moves failure from being the elephant in the room to something that teams can talk about transparently and collaboratively.

Pre-Mortem is about seeing things from the client's point of view. The idea didn't fail because of anything you did or didn't do. It failed because it was too complicated, risky, time-consuming, or expensive for customers to buy into.

Anchoring your big idea in your customer’s reality can change that. At True&North we use a tool called a pre-mortem map which follows a few simple steps.

By following the Pre-Mortem process, ideas can be protected and risks mitigated.

It helps teams build confidence when launching and carrying out ambitious and daring projects. It also increases the chances of predicting future events. Research from the University of Colorado found that prospective hindsight, that is, imagining that an event has already happened, increases the ability to correctly identify the reasons for future outcomes by 30% (Harvard Business Review).

How to apply pre-mortem:

Set up the scenario

Before sending a proposal to a client or, for larger projects, with the client, establish the scenario using these food for thought. Ask yourself who were the people who killed the idea, why, and what risks they weren't comfortable taking?

Map all the elements

Map out all elements of the project, identifying stakeholders, budget holders, and all tasks that need to be accomplished for the project to be delivered. By taking a holistic view of what it takes to bring the idea to life from start to finish, it will help you identify stakeholders you hadn't considered and potential areas of tension. Is there a team or person essential to carrying out this project? How does this project fit into their overall workload and priorities?

Kill the project

It's important to say that the project is dead, rather than just hypothetically imagining what could go wrong. It forces you to find flaws and take risks. There is no “get out of jail free card.” Review all the stakeholders involved and the tasks to be accomplished that you have mapped. What are the risks ? What would make someone want to walk away?

Think about potential solutions

Once you have identified all the possible problems and risks, go back to the drawing board, look for solutions, and question what has worked in the past. Is there an obvious solution to this problem where you haven't seen one before? You can then guess and wonder if.

Optimize the creation and delivery process

The Pre-Mortem comes before you are ready to share your big idea with the world. This can be done in-house, but you can also take clients with you on the pre-mortem journey. It can also be used when realizing a big idea or project, especially if there is a change of direction or significant deviation from the original plan. Maybe a new CEO has joined the company, or business priorities have changed and your idea is under threat again.

Introducing pre-mortem as a standard practice in the creative process allows teams to sell and resolve issues much more effectively. This human-centered innovation offers everyone, including those who don’t identify as salespeople – like creatives, technologists, and consultants – a path to selling that is more intuitive and connected to their work.

Big ideas that can change the world require vision, courage and imagining the impossible. But for them to come true, they must be anchored in reality. This is where Pre-Mortem comes in, broadening the perspective, sowing possibilities where there were initially obstacles and risks. By following this process, big ideas become even bigger and are much more likely to succeed.

David Clayton is CEO and Founder of True&North.