Have been reading a book written by a copywriter called Luke Sullivan - the book, "hey Whipple, squeeze this"(amazon) or something along those lines, is a basic dos and don't s of writing copy and producing ads, well as far as I've gotten anyhow.
One part, and a technique that is gradually becoming habit, is to not rely upon your first idea - it may be good, but it ain't that good. Think about it, if every time you relied upon your first "good" idea, then copy writing would be easy and there would be a load more folk doing it, especially considering the wages commanded by some of the top copy writers. But the truth of the matter is it just takes plain and simple hard work, working through the creative pain barrier.
Somewhere close to the beginning (as I said, I´m still not that far) there is reference to a psychological habit that happens on a regular basis throughout many aspects of daily life - I don't know whether it comes from laziness of mind, lack of imagination, optimizing time or what - but it is the habit of wanting things there and now, like fast food - we know we could get a much healthier, tasty meal if we only wait a while longer (or spend that little bit more hard earned cash) and the satisfaction would be greater - so why do we always tend to jump right in without looking over the edge first?
What am i trying to articulate here? Ideas, I suppose, only come after deliberation, graft and the application of experience. This, I believe is the best thing I am learning from my teachers at school - patience before leaping, or shouting out from the rooftops that the ideas produced are "the best ever" and then getting shot down in an instant by your peers and professionals.
Saying all this, I have some "nice" ideas running around in my head at the moment - the one mentioned in a earlier post about "old people" is a case in point - the joke itself is funny, but the mixture of the correct image, font, layout, so forth - and then i think it would be worthwhile to make it part of a series so that i can say i am offending everybody and not just the elderly - put the joke into perspective. Who to pick on - the elderly, babys, teenagers, students, parents, women, men - basically an ad campaign against the general population of the planet - I have my starting point, just got to write out the taglines - at least 100 per target - thanks, luke. squeeze that (though what that is I am still hunting for).