What’s the most powerful thing known to man?  It’s not a WMD or a ruler of a country.  It’s not a massive earth mover on a construction site or the jaws of a Great White Shark.  It’s not a ‘roided up body builder or 1.21 gigawats.  Nope.  It’s none of those.  The most powerful thing known to man is The Idea.

The Idea starts it all.  Think about it.  Nothing happens, nothing CAN happen, without the spark of The Idea.

(EDITOR  NOTE:  It can go by many names:  Inspiration, Muse, Creative Thinking.  But for me the bottom line is they all lead to The Idea.)

For whatever reason, it seems “creatives” have become – for lack of a better word – lazy.  The proof is all around us across all media.  Hollywood’s been doing it for years remaking/repackaging/repurposing the same stories.  Commercials are being copied.  Company A has a lizard “spokesperson” so the competitor has a frog.  Company F has a burly outdoorsman in a red hat as its pitchman so its competitor has an outdoorsman  who is burly with an orange shirt.  All of this begs the questions:  What has happened to The Idea?  Where has it gone?  Why has it gone?  Why are people/companies/corporations less inclined to develop The Idea than years ago?  Where are the risk takers?  Why has taking a chance on The Idea become synonymous with “no?”

(EDITOR NOTE:  One area where “creatives” are NOT lazy is coming up with adjectives to describe the remake.)

The rare exception is coming up this Sunday during The Super Bowl.  With so many people watching (roughly 100 million in the U.S. alone) and with ad time costing $3.5 million per 30 seconds (add in a few more million to create the ad) you’d think this would be the time to play it safe.  How safe?  Why not dress some chimps up as office workers.  Who doesn’t like a chimp dressed as a human and doing human things?  It’s adorable, right?  Not so fast.

CareerBuilder.com (for those who haven’t clicked the above link) is the company that had The Idea, and is taking flak for being creative, trying something a little bit different (EDITOR NOTE:  using chimps as humans has been done countless times) and the commercial hasn’t even aired yet.  Someone somewhere is wondering “Why bother?”  Whoa.  Wait a sec.  And this is brilliant.  Genius, really.  It’s all a huge conspiracy between the company and the entity complaining so that the company gets talked about.  That must be it.  Yup.  That’s pure genius.  I’m wrong.  I’m sorry.  Clearly The Idea is alive and well. (EDITOR NOTE:  This too is not new.  See Coke, New.  Obviously  the writer has no new ideas either.)

Ian Cohen is Production Director at The Radio Agency. Please follow The Radio Agency’s Blog “Sounding Board” by subscribing to the RSS link above. Visit our website TheRadioAgency.com