The concept comes first

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Concepting is the most demanding part of my job. A concept is not a design, not a visual, and not text. It's an idea that brings all those elements together with seemingly effortless grace. Clients and readers must get it in a glance. It can require no thought, but must be clever enough to catch attention. Like I said, it's the most demanding part of my job.

Target moms was the concept for the XIGO product launch. 
The day begins. The creative director makes a simple statement. "We need a concept for this piece." What he means is, go knock your brains out and come up with no less than 40 original, creative ideas for how to communicate the story of this brand.. product... offering, etc. He's been doing this a long time. He knows it's not going to be the 7th idea, or even the 27th that moves forward. It's usually somewhere around 38 or 39 that I finally get an idea with enough juice to carry a brand--or a brochure--or an ad.

The concept seems obvious after the fact. One of the best tests of a good concept is that, once you come up with it, it seems so obvious. Of course this is the way to convey this message. Of course this is our brand story. How could it be anything else? It speaks to the heart of what the client is trying to convey. And when you're lucky enough to hit the bulls eye, the client may even think they came up with it, it's that "right on."

The concept is not a training manual. Concepts are simple. They require no explanation beyond a headline, or at most, a subhead. Their purpose is not to educate the reader on the ins and outs of a business. No one should need to read the body copy to understand a concept, or have the clever meaning behind the concept explained to them. As a former university teacher, I often forget about this rule. I want to explain. I want to lay it out for my reader why this concept is so cool, if you just think about it this way. To guard against this "teacher tendency," I make myself scan my list of concepts on the printed page and ask, "Would they get it in a glance?" If not, it hits the trash.

The concept cannot wander off. Often I'll come up with a killer concept. It really gets the message across. Then I realize, yes, it's getting the message across, but it's not the right message. Sigh. I've been carried deeper into the forest, following creative breadcrumbs only to realize I've lost the original message. I had it somewhere back at the beginning, but I went astray. There's nothing to do but tuck your igeniuous, irrelevant message away for future use and return to the beginning of the path.

When a concept works, your reader remembers it. They think about it while jogging the next day. They have a little chuckle. Their brain automatically pulls up the image you linked with the copy and registers a positive emotion. You've done it. You've married a brand to an emotional response. You've raised recognition. You've engendered loyalty. You've sparked interest to know more. Congratulations, you can now call yourself a "concepter."

6 million moments

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A "psychological moment" in your life lasts about three seconds. That means you'll experience (excluding sleep) about 6 million moments in a month; 20,000 in a day. How many of these will you remember? Very few. The rest will simply disappear, wisps of clouds that slowly give way to the mental equivalent of a blue sky.

The tyranny of the remembering self
The only way we get to "keep" any moment of our lives is to store it in memory. It is our "remembering self" that determines what we remember and how we remember it. So what criteria does your remembering self use to determine what to keep and what to forget? It uses your life story. According to Daniel Kahnemann (Nobel laureate and psychologist), our ongoing life narrative sits in tyranny over our experiencing self, filtering and shaping our experience to fit our story's form. If I tell myself a story that I must defend myself against rejection from others, I filter my encounters against this story line, remembering what fits and forgetting what doesn't. If I tell myself a story that I am quite happy in my life and have everything I need, I also filter accordingly.

One sensational minute
For the next minute, widen your awareness to bring to consciousness as many of the sensations flooding through your body to your brain as you can. What can you see? What do you hear? What do you feel on your feet or between your fingers or under your skin? Is there a taste in your mouth? Although it can be exhilarating for the short term, opening to the rush of sensations for longer periods of time overwhelms consciousness. To guard against this overhwhelm, our brains filter our sensations. In other words, our stories keep us sane. It's interesting to note, however, that this filtering occurs before we are conscious of it. Most of what we experience remains forever lost to our conscious minds. In fact, about 98% of what you experience, you won't remember.

The good and the bad news
What are you choosing to remember? Are you focusing on finding a way to share yourself with the world? Are you focusing on how everyone you meet sooner or later dissapoints you? Are you focusing on how anchored and grounded you feel in nature? The good news is that whatever you focus on is what you'll remember and these memories will reinforce your "story filter" for future encounters. That's also the bad news.

Can you change your story?
You can change any story line that's causing you distress. How? Pretend that the opposite belief is true. Maybe that means "pretending" that people are trustworthy, that things do go your way, or that your life is simple and peaceful. And, here's the fun part. Spend a day living "as if" this belief were true for you. Consciously look for proof that this new thought is true. Go hunting for new experiences that contradict your old story line. You may find, as promised by Thich Nhat Hanh, that "we have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize."