Tuesday Marketing Book Club #5 – A Technique for Producing Ideas by Webb Young

My choice for this Tuesday’s marketing book is “A Technique for Producing Ideas”, a thin paperback by James Webb Young. Written in the 1965 it has become a cult and I’ve seen it referenced in other advertising books (like It’s not how good you are… which I featured last month). The foreword is by the man who changed the industry and got the creative juices flowing on Madison Avenue, Mr Bill Bernbach of DDB.

James Webb Young is no stranger to the world of creativity: he was the First Chairman of The Advertising Council and among other distinctions, received the Advertising Man of the Year Award in 1946 and was inducted in the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame.

I enjoyed reading this book for its simplicity and common sense. In our age of constant interruption and internet-induced procrastination, it is a good reminder of how to get focus and get the job done. It also reinforces how we, marketers, should always research our markets and products and give time for ideas to emerge – “the Mental Digestive Process”.

You can’t rush art. But you can put a repeatable process behind your idea generation.

What do you think? Please join our Tuesday Marketing Book Club linkedin group to discuss.

Get it from Amazon here:
A Technique for Producing Ideas