How to generate ideas: Be more Hume, and stop doing what you’re f****ng told.

The tagline on my website says: “I write down ideas for money”.

I’m a copywriter, so this is true — generating ideas is my actual job. People pay me because I basically make something out of nothing. If you haven’t got a name, I’ll give you one. If you haven’t got a brand, I’ll build you one. If you haven’t got an advert — I’ll think of one.

Due to this tagline (I think) — I get one question more than any other:

“How do you go about coming up with ideas?”

or worse

“What’s your idea generation process?”

It usually comes from copywriters/creatives who are trying to learn — but the question can honestly come from anywhere, and it makes me stumble every time.

Last year my agency asked me to write an entire article about how to “generate an idea” and I just stared at the title blankly for a month before giving up, wondering how the hell anybody could put it into words:

“I don’t…errr… know how… I just do?”

Luckily, I’ve had a year since then to think about it — and watch other people fuck it up — which gave me an idea. Naturally.

1. What not to do.

Stop copying other people. If it’s been done before — and you’re not adding anything new to it — scrap it. Now.

I spend an awful lot of time on Twitter.

In comparison to other platforms, I’ve found it’s where the funny people tend to congregate — like the kitchen at a house party, or the beer garden at a pub.

There is never a day that passes where Twitter fails to make me laugh and it’s usually due to someone’s pure, quippy wit — rather than, you know, a video of a dog wearing shoes, or people snorting lines of cinnamon and happy-slapping their Nan (God bless you Facebook, you tacky son of a bitch).

That said, there’s also never a day that passes where Twitter doesn’t threaten to give me an aneurysm — and that aneurysm is caused by one thing:

Continually rehashed marketing drivel-shite, parading itself around as ‘valuable insight’.

The creative industry prides itself on generating ‘ideas’… but we spend an awful lot of time and money not doing that.