hello and welcome to a series dedicated to every creative's bread and butter concepting in this series I'm going to share my personal process for concepting a ton of different techniques for coming up with big ideas what to do when you feel stumped and of course we're going to go over a bunch of fun examples [Music] fine concepting concepting is essentially the advertising term for brainstorming why use a different word because the end goal of concepting is a bunch of you guessed it Creative Concepts concepting is a time for an art director and copywriter partner to explore all kinds of possibilities based on the strategy the brief and any other guard rails you might have then organize the strongest and most interesting of those possibilities into Concepts that you present to your creative director and then hopefully the client after that concepting can last hours days even weeks if you're on a bigger project and if you happen to be working on a Super Bowl commercial it'll probably last months concepting is where your relationship with your copywriter or art director partner really shines you should feel comfortable enough with each other to just shout out any and all ideas that come to your brain including the ones that might sound a little crazy or stupid or both you're going to be building on each other's ideas and making them better and when you're doing it right chances are concepting is going to be really fun I like to start concepting before I even get kicked off on a project and not because I'm an overachiever but because you will never be less informed than you are before kickoff in this moment you are essentially in the same headspace as a consumer because you've either never heard of the brand or you only know what the general public knows about the Brand This is an awesome place to start coming up with thought starters and Creative Concepts so here's what I want you to do before the kickoff meeting as soon as you hear what brand you're going to be working on write down your thoughts about it what are your perceptions of the brand or the product if you've never heard of them before just write down your assumptions write down the things that Intrigue you about the brand or the product or any red flags that come up what are you dying to know more about write it all down and know that this part doesn't have to take forever you could just spend 10 minutes before your kickoff meeting doing this it doesn't have to be super time intensive but it can be really beneficial and result in some really interesting stuff to work with later on side note you're going to hear me say write it down a lot in this video I'm a huge opponent of writing everything down even if it feels unimportant or dumb in the moment writing things down helps in a couple ways it gives you something to come back to and review when you've been concepting for hours and your brain is melting and you can't think straight and it also just removes things from your brain so that you can make space for other ideas so grab a notebook and start writing okay so you're in your kickoff meeting you're learning all about the client the project deliverables the strategy what have you as you learn more about the brand or product during this meeting you're probably going to have some more questions do you know what I'm going to say write them down and write them down as soon as you think of them because sometimes those questions end up getting answered in that meeting by the account team the strategist anyone really but if you had that question chances are a consumer would have the exact same question so that topic would be a perfect place to explore during your concepting session later alright so you're officially kicked off I know you want to just run to a cozy spot and start bouncing ideas off your partner but I want you to wait on that just a little bit longer what you're gonna do is step away from your computer and the internet and bury your head in a notebook this is your time to write down ideas solely based on the brief you just got in that kickoff meeting you're going to read that brief multiple times especially the sections on the audience the background on the client or brand the Insight the business problem all that juicy information I know every agency's brief looks a little different but you'll probably find very similar information in any brief you get I really like to underline or highlight words and phrases in the brief that stand out to me or just seem interesting or maybe worth further exploration write down any and all ideas that come to mind even if it's just a fragment of an idea or like one word that isn't really anything yet just write it down and of course if you're reading this brief and you think of more questions and things that you want to know more about write it down are you sensing a pattern yet I usually like to spend at least an hour working on my own sometimes I'll even take a whole day to myself before working with my partner if you immediately start chatting with your partner you're gonna narrow your team's Focus so much but if you both work separately for a little bit by the time you do get in a room together you're gonna have double the ideas the topics the things to explore it's going to be amazing so this time alone is extremely valuable definitely take the time to yourself and remember write everything down so even though you haven't even gotten to your first official concepting session yet I bet you have pages of stuff to work with so many thought starters and fragments of ideas so much to research and dive deeper into and so much to bounce off of your partner and in there rest of the series I'm going to teach you a ton of different ways to turn random thoughts and fragments of ideas into strong Creative Concepts so stick around [Music]