As copywriters and designers, we all know we’re supposed to Steal Like an Artist. Austin Kleon said so. Picasso said something similar with his “Good artists copy, but great artists steal” line. It makes sense, since there’s “nothing new under the sun.” But how do we know we’re stealing well-timed ideas?

Anyone can spot a good idea. A good idea is the one that grabs onto you. It’s the one that niggles at the back of your brain. A good idea is the one that’s so exciting it wakes you up in the middle of the night and says “write me” or “paint me” or “this is how I will finally get the Coke account.”

But for a good idea to become a great idea, it has to resonate with an audience, and hitting the right idea at the right time for your audience is tricky.

The lifecycle of an idea

As a marketer (or artist), how do you find that sweet spot where a really creative idea hits an audience that’s ready for it? You have to consider the lifecycle of an idea.

Stage 1: Innovation

Notice I didn’t call this section “origination.” Whether original thought is possible is a much larger, and different, subject. But innovators do create ideas in that they often take two disparate thoughts and weave them together to form something new. In the case of “The Wall,” Roger Waters combined his sense of alienation with the form of a rock opera.

Innovators are often artists and what artists are better at than anyone else is seeing the world through fresh eyes. They take an idea and flip it on its head or look at it sideways. Sometimes art is political commentary and sometimes it’s a fascination with texture, but it’s always an exploration on the part of the artist.

Most people don’t have the time or the inclination for those soul-searching (and sometimes fruitless) explorations, but they can help the rest of us see the world from their perspective. Anyone watching Andy Warhol stare at Campbell’s Soup cans probably thought he was nuts. But when he re-contextualized those cans by turning them from something you’d put in your pantry into something you’d hang on your wall, he forced us to see them differently.

Similarly, in writing The Time Machine, HG Wells showed readers that they’d been taking the linear quality of time for granted.

Ideas can gestate inside the world of the innovators—changing, refining, and expanding—and it often takes an amplifier to get those ideas out to the general public.

Stage 2: Amplification and Interpretation

Innovating artists aren’t always the best communicators of their ideas or sometimes they don’t see the true value in them. The Time Machine was the second work Wells wrote about time travel. It was his publisher, Heinemann, who convinced him to explore the idea in novel form and then they shared his work with the public. Wells needed Heinemann to amplify his work.

Another way an innovator’s work can enter stage two of the lifecycle of an idea is through interpretation. Warhol needed the Ferus Gallery to understand the statement he was making so the gallery could then interpret his message in a way that helped the art world see that those soup cans were a statement and not just an illustration.
Marketers are unique in that we have to be innovators, amplifiers, and interpreters.

Amplifiers

The media can be another bridge between innovators and the public. Consider The New York Times arts section. The journalists and editors don’t make that art, but they know which galleries and blogs to go to in order to find up and coming artists. Consider the article above about the comeback of new age music. One month before this article was published in The New York Times, the piece below about Laraaji, a pioneer of new age music, appeared in The Quietus.

It’s not stealing, per se. Many would argue an idea can't be stolen at all. The staff of The New York Times knows which blogs to dig around in to find ideas that are new to the public at large. As an amplifier, they curate information about the innovators. They also look for and describe trends among individual innovators and how that information can be woven together to tell a greater story.

There are tiers of amplification, too, that can be described in terms of where amplifiers get their ideas and how early in the lifecycle they publish them. For example, many local newspapers syndicate articles from The New York Times a week after they initially appear. Then you will find that other outlets like Next Draft add yet another layer of curation and echo to another audience.

The idea does not change through this process, it’s more about who has access to the knowledge when.

Interpreters

Interpreters make the idea more concrete and translate it into something a wider audience can understand. For example, scientists who take the theory of a black hole and then apply scientific and mathematical rigor to further test and understand the idea.

The next step after interpretation is not stage three. Instead, an idea that has been interpreted is more likely to go straight to stage 4 or start again at stage 1.

Stage 3: Recycling

Once an idea has been introduced to and accepted by the general public, it becomes a cultural referent—part of our everyday conversation. The idea enters a stage of recycling where it’s bounced around in conversation and in advertising.

Some artists abhor this popularization of their ideas—they think of it as selling out. Jim Morrison famously threw a fit when he found out “Light My Fire” had been sold for use in a Buick commercial. But it’s a natural part of the lifecycle, and as marketers, any imitation of our ideas should be considered not just flattery but also success.

The recycling stage can last indefinitely because different people are ready for different ideas at different times. Discovering Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” as a tween in Idaho rocked my world. I had no idea the album was almost as old as I was. I may have been waaaaay behind the times, but that didn’t change the fact that it was the right album for me at just the right time. It wasn’t overdone, yet…

Stage 4: Saturation

The shift from the recycling stage to saturation can be a rapid one. Consider Pachelbel’s Canon. You thought it had reached saturation point when you’d heard it at every wedding in the last decade. But no, true saturation looks like this:

Or this:

At this stage, the very few people who haven’t encountered an idea are the ones who are actively avoiding it. It’s nearly impossible to tell if the Etsy items above are referencing Warhol or Campbell’s or both, because the message has been recycled to the point that it’s lost.

The only way to salvage an idea in the saturation stage is to let it go dormant for a period.

Stage 5: Dormancy

Ideas, like energy, are conserved, but that does not always mean they are active. Sometimes an idea will go dormant for years or even decades. This mountain of dormant ideas presents an opportunity for innovators who know how to identify when and how to resurface and reimagine an idea.

Don’t get discouraged if your idea or content skips ahead to dormancy. Sometimes an idea is so good it gets a step or two ahead of its time. “Unchained Melody” had a brief stint of popularity when it was released as a B side by The Righteous Brothers in 1965. Then it lingered in dormancy until an innovator used it in the film Ghost.

Mining for dormant ideas gets easier and easier as our cultural attention span shortens. Read an old book to learn and share what environmentalism meant before global warming was a buzzword. Or dig for treasure deep your Netflix queue. A recent survey of Portent staff shows that Twin Peaks might be on the verge of a comeback.

The ideas are out there waiting for you to discover them.

Ideation in Action

The Birth of Venus

You’re probably familiar with Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” whether from its use on the cover of Adobe Illustrator or from Uma Thurman’s interpretation in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

What you probably don’t know is that this work is a particularly good example of how great ideas can get stuck in the innovation stage for a while. Sandro Botticelli’s 15th century painting was inspired by 2nd century descriptions by Pliny the Elder of the ancient Greek masterpiece Anadyomene Venus. Other artists who painted subsequent works with the same name include William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Alexandre Cabanel.

It’s impossible to say what amplifier vaulted this image into the recycling stage of pop culture, but it’s now been imagined and reimagined thousands of times with Venus being played by everyone from Betty White to Lady Gaga to a particularly adorable cat.

Venus may be squarely in the saturation stage, but she won’t slip into dormancy without a fight.

Carmina Burana

In 1934, Carl Orff found a text compiled by Johann Andreas Schmeller in 1847 (which brought together a medieval collection of poems), and then Orff wrote a piece of music called “Carmina Burana.” This classic piece of music has been arranged and recorded many times. These days you’re just as likely (or even more so) to hear it in a movie or commercial as you are in concert.

This beer commercial is actually really appropriate because although the music sounds very classic and orchestral, much of Orff’s libretto celebrates bacchanalian vices including drinking, gluttony, and lust.

The Opportunity for Marketers

Of course, having a fuller understanding of the idea lifecycle can help you find opportunities as a marketer. Considering where and how your audience gets its information can help you find ways to get ahead of them and present timely ideas.

Creating the news

There’s a huge opportunity right now for brands to shift up a stage in the ideation universe. For so long, brands have been stuck recycling ideas—speaking in the language of ideas that customers already understand from media and elsewhere—but now is our chance as marketers to help brands become idea amplifiers and interpreters. Marketing can now become part of the idea translation process.

As budgets for newsrooms have shrunk, the consumer’s appetite for information has not. Now is the time for marketers and brands to fill that information gap and become the go-to resources for information about whatever niche we’re working in. This means creating blogs about your industry and the ideas that feed it. It means giving readers the kind of research they once expected from the media. It means investigating, questioning, and informing. It means reframing information in a way that readers can connect with.

• Write an article about how your industry has shaped demographic trends,
• Create an infographic about the amount of medication Americans ingest,
• Or, build an interactive about the value of a social share.

Useful content is your opportunity. Don’t waste it.

Journalistic integrity

When you are creating content, you have an implied responsibility to provide honest, unbiased information. Readers are already wary of brands. They know you have something to sell, and if you abuse your reader’s trust by providing biased or unbalanced information, you’ll lose them to another amplifier. Transparency, though, just might win you their heart, their social shares, and their conversions.

Get your timing right

Remember that in order to connect with your audience, you have to catch them at the right stage of the lifecycle. If they need to know first, you’ll want to build a connection with the innovators and become that bridge between them and your audience. You’ll be exploring the far corners of the Internet and the galleries in Philly to find obscure ideas and inspiration.

If your audience is used to getting information later down the chain, that means they might want you to translate the information more before they get it. For example, readers who are in tune with The New York Times will want to feel like they are the first to know but they want you to curate those ideas for them. Meanwhile, readers of The Moscow-Pullman Daily News might be more comfortable with an idea that’s been accepted into the mainstream, especially if you add a fresh interpretation.

But beware of saturation. If you’re sharing an idea your audience has already heard and you aren’t adding anything new to the conversation, you will lose your audience (and any shares or conversions).

As marketers, we are interpreters (always) and innovators (whenever possible). Everything we learn about our audience should help us turn ideas from concepts into relatable ideas. You might find the experience of translation enriches everyone.