The Master Guide / 03 Concepts and references · The idea
The proposition, and the five obvious ideas
One sentence says what the film must do. Five sentences say what everyone else would do.
One sentence says what the film must do. Five sentences say what everyone else would do.
Work in the agency order and skip nothing: research and insight, proposition, ideas wide, selection, development, recommendation. Never judge while generating [proven]. Judging kills ideas before they have a chance to grow into something better.
Write the proposition in one sentence: what the film must make the audience feel, think or do, built on the insight (see The brief and research → The insight, and the fallback when there is no consumer truth). Note which insight and proposition each concept answers; the chosen one is carried into your project record at approval.
Start the parallel research while you write ideas: the category's codes from 10–20 local ads, the culture and genre scene, audience tensions from real comments, and the word list for the locked sub-dialect (see The brief and research → Research as a funnel). Its conclusions feed the cut, not the first round of ideas.
Write down the five obvious ideas for this brief and category first: the ones any agency would bring. They are banned as finished concepts unless a twist makes them new [proven]. Writing them down is how you stop meeting them again in disguise.
If a core element of the brief is still unclear after the meeting, settle it before you write ideas. Never fill it by taste.
Why: two independent jury voices name the same reflex. Ali Ali, president of the 2025 Cannes Film Craft jury, asks jurors to see the type of ad before the ad itself, and to look for the work that escapes its type. Brent Anderson, on the D&AD 2026 Film jury, found that singular ideas came out on top.
Sources
Ali Ali (LBB interview, 2025); Brent Anderson, D&AD 2026 Film jury (D&AD Annual).