A word about originality (or the lack thereof)

by Blair Warren

There are a few big-name marketing gurus who like to say there are no new ideas in marketing.  Perhaps this position is debatable, but one thing is not; many people take this advice to mean that since it is “impossible” to come up with original ideas, we shouldn’t try to.  Instead, we should resign ourselves to living inside a psychological recycle bin and start “borrowing” ideas from others, put a little spin on them and pass them off as our own.

What these “recyclers” seem to overlook - and what I believe even the gurus would agree with - is that even though it may be next to impossible to generate truly original ideas in almost any field, it is possible to develop an original voice from which to speak.  And an original voice isn’t something you “tack onto” ideas you steal from others.  It is actually something that brings forth ideas from within yourself.  Find the voice and you won’t need to steal from others.  You will find the ideas arise all on their own.

Will these ideas be earth-shatteringly original?  Almost certainly not.  So in that sense, you will have failed.  But when you combine these ideas with the “original voice” which conjured them up they take on a power that no “copycat” can ever hope to tap into.  And that is something worth striving for.

Posted on Thursday, December 09, 2004 at 07:27 AM

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