To understand the lifespan of Idea #53, I first have to take you back. It’s a Kloof Street coffee meeting, 8.00am on a rainy Wednesday morning. The Suit has his plastic hanging out waiting to pay for the 2 single lattes and a apple cinnamon muffin for the copywriter who specified skinny milk and is slightly irate because she can taste the difference. The queue stretches all they way back to the bathroom.

It’s noisy but the copywriter starts talking about the Client X Brief. He shuts her down. Mainly because he can’t hear her over the screaming Zulus, and secondly because he feels that it’s his Role in The Universe this morning. He’s also slightly hungover from the after work drinks at the agency bar, which started as an innocent catch-up with the client service team until the Production manager arrived and handed everybody Don Julio’s. He can’t stand Caprice. Especially on a Tuesday. The meeting goes terribly.

That night the copywriter heads home early from work. Traffic to Tamboerskloof is gridlocked around the construction at the Kloof street robots and she’s listening to the Ultimix at 6. The Client X brief pops into her mind. She sees a blur of shapes and people and conversations flying around her head like a dense chicken soup her mother used to make her during those wintery July months. There’s a million creative options. Client X getting married to Julius Malema. Client X killing little white bunnies. Client X featuring Koekomoer killing little white bunnies. Koekemoer marrying Julius Malema who is wearing the new ANC jacket range and eating Nandos. All are brilliant. Inspiration has struck but there are no 4B pencils and no little Black Moleskins with the thick mozart inspired absorbent yellow paper to jot these ideas down. Her brain is trying to give birth to Idea #53, but it’s still a fuzzy bunny blur in her head. She’s trying to grasp the core, jot down the essence. Idea #53 floats around her like a wishless crop of Dandelions refusing to land.

But Idea #53 has a lot in store. First, it’s going to have to survive the Client X pitch next week. Even before that it has to be bullet-proofed for client service, who like to take out that arrogant shotgun stance at Friday afternoon status meetings. Even then, Idea #53 will be submitted to the Client who have all sorts of Idea Killers with fancy acronyms up their sleeves. The CCRB (Creative Communications Review Board), the CCCLMCM (Communication Challenges Committee and Legal Matters Considerations Meeting). God Forbid they submit Idea #53 to the scrutiny of the ALAACCOMWCEP (The Accessory and Legal Ambit Arm of Corporate Coms and Other Matters We Can’t Exactly Place). Over the next few weeks, Idea #53 will be racked, ripped, unraveled and stripped. Eventually it will be returned with a large dossier of paperwork in a Body Bag DHL make especially for ideas returning from the front. Covered in Red Stamps.

In a knowledge economy, ideas are our currency. Ideas are an intellectual property which is difficult to order. “One amazingly incredible idea please. Can I have it 4×6 in red, green and with a touch of magic.” Our biggest challenge as a creative industry is to create ideas not only to survive the critical hammering they take until budget approval. But also to produced them with an excellence and magic that retains the freshness and imagination of the moment they were originally breathed. (Inspiration literally means ‘to be breathed upon‘).