when someone else brings your idea to life

So. Part of being in the marketing, advertising and new products development world is you (unfortunately) get to see ideas you have presented or developed brought to market by someone else.

It’s kind of the way of the world. It isn’t ripping someone’s idea off. Or plagiarizing. Or trying to make yourself believe “you trash is someone else’s food.”

It’s mostly because no idea is unique (or, maybe better said, it is very very rare to have a truly unique idea). You can pretty much bet that at the exact same time (or relatively soon within that time frame) the same idea you have, or very similar to it, is being discussed or presented somewhere else.

Why?

Well. There are a lot of smart insightful people in the world. And you are all looking at pretty much the same information and trends and what is going on in the world. So (generally speaking) all of you are absorbing the same types of stimulus. So (generally speaking) smart people are going to generate a relatively small array/range of responses to that stimulus.

By the way. That is why speed to market (or over thinking and slowing down speed to market) is often underrated as a part of a business plan.

Anyway. There are several things that happen to make your ideas die.

Wrong presentation (or poor presentation).

Wrong time (for whoever may be implementing the idea).

Or maybe just the wrong implementer (the idea isn’t right for them but would have been right for someone else).

I personally believe if I do my job right in presenting an idea (the logic, the dollars & cents, the bla bla bla) that the idea will happen (the corollary to this belief is that I typically accept responsibility for whenever one of those ideas don’t get implemented).

But. Reality is that of the three things I mentioned earlier two of them are on the implementer side of the table.

Regardless.

No matter how much logic and understanding you have for what happens to good ideas whenever you see one you presented come into market from someone else you are just never accustomed enough to the experience that it sits well.

Well. In fact. It sucks. (because no one ever articulates your idea like you would have .. that’s a reality)

So I say all this because for some reason over the past 6 months or so there have been a lineup of McTague associated ideas (TV campaigns, creative executions, strategy ideas, new products) floating into the market within the purview of people and groups that I have never been associated with (further proof I am not brilliant and others have good ideas and can actually sell them).

Let me be clear. No one stole these ideas. These are just ideas they had (and groups I was associated with also had) and they figured out a way to get them implemented.

Coors, Orkin, CARQUEST, UK Obesity Initiative, a couple of large health insurance companies (they are using a great strategy we had developed), a national values campaign, a packaged goods company and Denny’s. Like I said. I am kind of used to it because it does happen all the time and a lot over a relatively long career … but the sheer amount in the short period of time kinda smacks you around a little. And maybe say “aw, shit” a little more often they you typically do.

But, no matter what, you always look at them and scratch your head and go “shit, I wish they wouldn’t have done THAT (just some wacky thing that of course you would have never done) but the rest is pretty good.”

But. I try and resolve the pain in that it ain’t my idea anymore (despite the desire to immediately write some diatribe to whoever did the idea and say “why did you ruin the concept by doing THAT?”).

I have laughed about this whole issue with a wide number of business associates. And we all chuckle a little but we always also do it a little painfully. They all become one of the ideas that “got away.” And every time you see one of them you revisit the presentation or the discussion when it died and reexamine things to see what you could have done differently.

And then you also have to try to put things in perspective. For example. When the Orkin campaign (that we saw on television) was introduced recently, and the original team who developed the idea started the roundtable of emails that inevitably follow something like that, I did remind the creative director that in the same presentation we had presented the campaign idea that eventually aired for 3+ years. So that maybe one really great idea had trumped just a plain great idea on that day. I also vividly remember in that presentation having to choose as the client said “so, if you had to do one of these two which would you recommend?” and, knowing the client as well as we did, truly chose the right idea (because at that time they would never have done the other … in fact an almost verbatim from that meeting at the end was “I really like that idea but I don’t think we are ready for it.”)

Oh. With that thought.

One other reason some of these really great ideas end up being implemented by someone else.

You cannot re-present an idea (not these days that’s for sure). It could be the greatest idea since the pony keg but if you try to bring back an old idea it is … well … an old idea.

Wow. That sure does sound silly now that I actually typed it out.

But. Unfortunately. Silly as it may sound. It remains a truth.