Where Correct (Ad) Ideas Come From

A short reflection on where strong advertising ideas really come from. This piece argues that the best marketing insight does not emerge from abstraction alone, but from lived experience with a product, service, or customer journey. Drawing on phenomenology, workplace observation, and Mad Men’s famous Kodak pitch in “The Wheel,” the article makes the case that marketers need direct contact with the things they are trying to describe. If you want better copy, better positioning, and better customer language, you need to move through the funnel, use the product, notice the frictions and pleasures, and pay attention to how the thing actually enters lived experience.