Why wait?

Is there a case anymore for testing advertising ideas?

The people spending money on ideas still want assurances. They want proof that words and design and motion and interaction will change hearts and minds--and open wallets. Fair enough. The modern economy has a solution.

It used to cost a lot of time and money to find out if an idea might work. The process was expensive, which meant it acquired a sense of value. You'd stop people in malls, pay them to drive to desolate conference rooms to be stared at (accusingly) through one way mirrors, or mail them forms to fill out and mail back, or pay other people to interrupt dinner with a phone call.

“Do you think this idea will work?”

And you'd find out if they thought you'd be wise to scale up distribution of said idea. Trouble was, if the potential audience didn't think you'd be wise, the team behind the idea often didn't know what to do about it. And it cost a lot of money to get to this point. Even worse, that was typically where the story of an idea would end.

What's beautiful about the world we work in now is at least twofold, as it relates to the irrelevancy of testing advertising ideas:

1) The cost of assembling legible-enough ideas, then distributing them widely or very specifically is almost free for the average corporate advertiser. The largest cost is generating the ideas in the first place. So why wait for an expensive reaction when you can get many for free out in the marketplace?

The old model said you had to be perfect at launch. You had one shot. That's not the only answer anymore in this age of endless in-boxes, of 72 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. You have more than one shot. Take them. We might not notice the first 16 times. We're busy.

2) Trial and error is ever more transparent and part of real life. The "good enough revolution" (e.g. MP3s) started the shift. The maker revolution takes it further. The audience is not afraid of the process of making stuff (even your process), provided it's useful and/or entertaining. We appreciate craft and perfection, but they are not essential attributes to starting a conversation. Perfection is the tactic you invest in after you've been around our tribe for a while. Even Carly Rae released seven songs before “Call Me Maybe.”

Bands and playwrights workshop new ideas. Why shouldn't brands?

I suspect control (i.e. fear and perfection) has a lot to do with it. We like to think we are still in control, don't we? Yet, “disaster check” testing is an excuse for forgetting to engage your audience before developing ideas; or admitting quality control isn't.

Ideas make change. Why wait to let them do that?