"Kill Your Darlings" - Making Creative Ads Work

In writing courses, you'll hear the phrase "kill your darlings," and often wonder why you're supposed to do away with the things you care for most.

The phrase has less to do with how you view your pets, children or relatives, and more to do with the way that once you fall in love with an idea, you can't look at it objectively.

You've probably seen an ad that just makes no sense. Why shoot a hamster out of a cannon in a Superbowl commercial, in order to promote a web-hosting service?

The concept of "kill your darlings" is one that's important to keep in mind when developing new creative advertising. You want to remember that no matter how cool/fun/interesting your concept may be, that if it doesn't move the potential customer closer to doing business with you, you're wasting your money.

You may think that having a half-naked model in the middle of an intersection is a great visual, but it'd take some work to get that image to bring people into your accounting business.

Great creative is the combination of cool ideas and effective ideas.

And of course, when you're ready to measure that effectiveness, there's always AdSymetrix.