7 Questions for David Guerrero

David Guerrero is Creative Chair and founder of BBDO-Guerrero in Manila. He has won numerous awards in advertising, a business founded primarily on creativity. BBDO-Guerrero is one of the top agencies in the country, and has won a slew of international and local awards. David is the author of the book The You-Have-To-Go-Through-A-Lot-of-Crap-Ideas-to Get-to-Good-Ideas book, a small book on how to bring out the big ideas in you.

1. What brought on the idea of making the crap ideas book?

This was a long and winding road (to quote The Beatles). It started with a BBDO seminar at the Cannes advertising festival with creative thinking coach Tom Monahan. He said that a good technique was to think of the worst possible idea for an ad - and then try to turn that round into a good idea. We tried it out and it worked! And then later that year I was invited to a Sri Lanka to judge an advertising award show. We were taken to an elephant orphanage by another BBDO colleague, and the main product of the orphanage was elephant dung paper. They mulch up the grass in a way that makes it perfect for the kind of handcrafted paper that you might be familiar with. Anyway I brought some back to Manila and we decided to make a book out of it called The Crap Ideas book. We later discovered that Theodore Sturgeon had a law that "90% of everything is crap" and then incorporated that into the idea.

2. Since we're on the topic of crap ideas, what is the one crap idea that you had you can't forget and still find hilarious?

You mean an idea that's so bad it's good? This book might be one of them! I never know whether I have done enough drafts to succeed but you can only do your best and keep trying. In a way the internet age means that nothing is ever final and we are always updating things. Like operating systems and software. So it's only really crap if you decide to leave it alone. And perhaps in those cases it's better to just to bury those ideas. And move on. Just like something that is 'no longer supported.' One thing is for sure: you can't get to anything good without going through a lot of stuff that is bad. And that's OK!