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You’ve got your good ideas, your bad ideas and your mud ugly ideas. The question is, how do you tell them apart? How do you pick the nuggets from the gravel?

Let’s be honest. Most newborn ideas are ugly, wrinkly little wretches. If the newborn is your own, you’re liable to think it’s a thing of wonder and beauty. But it’s going to need a whole lotta nurturing before anyone else will think so. Because it’s not theirs.

As you go through life, you will decide the fates of thousands of newborn ideas. You’ll need to know which ideas are worth nurturing and which, frankly, aren’t. Most challenging is tapping those ideas that are really great, or “wicked good” as we say in Maine.

“Life is a bowl of cherries. It’s full of pits. Whether you control your life or it controls you depends in large measure on your ability to spit out the pits.’’

– Richard Saunders

FACT: Picking winners and losers becomes increasingly difficult the more unusual an idea is. The further removed an idea is from the confines of precedent, the more likely it is either to light up the sky or explode in a blaze of failure.

Greg, a successful inventor, wrote to me regarding his experiences with trying to separate the good from the bad and ugly of ideas.

“To date, I have had 10 of my inventions go worldwide, several national and many just fail completely because of timing, because of markets or because they were just bad ideas and I was blinded by my convictions. Over the years, I have made millions of dollars … and lost as much.”

To those who wonder why Greg didn’t just keep the millions and never risk again, he goes on to explain.

“To me, money is just a tool to allow me to work on another invention. That’s my motivator, not money.”

Here’s the data on good vs. bad. Each point on the chart represents customers’ perceptions of how interested they would be in purchasing a new product or service concept and how new and different they perceive the idea to be.

You can see that, with ideas that are seen as being really and truly new and different, they generate significantly greater and significantly lower purchase interest.

On the flip side, as an idea is less new and different, it moves more toward the essence of average. It becomes safe. Safe is fine for the brain dead; safe means they can’t screw up. It also means they can’t be great.

No Guts, No Glory!

Check out that chart again. It shows that when your idea is the same old same old, you have no chance. That’s NO CHANCE of being great!

This is true for new product concepts. It’s true for your career. And it’s true for your life.

Minor differences have minor impact. Dramatic differences have the potential to be GREAT, WORLD CLASS, SPECTACULAR!!!

The geniuses of creativity know this relationship.

Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas created two of the biggest box office hits of all time—Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Both rated high on the scale of new and different. Both took risks.

Spielberg and Lucas also created 1941 and Howard the Duck, two of the most legendary stinkeroos of all time. Again, both movies were new and different. Twenty years hence, Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark will be remembered. The other two will have been long forgotten.

NEW AND DIFFERENT GOOD VS. NEW AND DIFFERENT BAD

At the Eureka! Ranch, our focus is on the new and novel. As a result, we have a bi-polar research history. With most of our corporate clients, we’ve set records for both the best concept scores in their corporate histories and the worst.

You might suppose it would be easy to distinguish good from bad. The fact is, when you leave the world of the “known” and fully understood, it’s quite difficult.

Even now, I chase lots of wild geese. Let me tell you about two of my most embarrassing failures.

The first is Stinky the Pig. I believed in Stinky. I could have sworn Stinky was destined to become the Barbie of kiddie games. Stinky was a plastic pig that “swallowed” numerous foul items. Using a pair of electronic tweezers, players removed plastic rotten eggs, sweat socks and overripe bananas from Stinky’s innards before the timer ran out.

“But beware,” so said the hype that accompanied Stinky. “If you’re not careful, Stinky will let go a terrific ‘bart.’”

A “bart” was the powerful aroma that would emerge from Stinky’s backside. It’s what made Stinky new and different. Inside every Stinky was a can of aerosol methane that would be triggered when the timer ran out or a player touched Stinky’s sides when removing items from his digestive system. I spent thousands of dollars building models of Stinky and formulating various “bart” bouquets.

Stinky looked like this

But as an idea, Stinky stunk. I pitched Stinky to one toy company after another. No one would touch him. Indeed, Stinky and I were shown the door at Parker Brothers within seconds after the initial test blast from my prototype’s porcine hindquarters.

Toy companies were concerned parents might be reluctant to embrace Stinky and bring him into their homes. The toy companies had a point. Parents often will look the other way at a toy that’s gross or of questionable taste, but they draw the line at toys that smell up the house.

In an effort to soften the parental barrier, I tried a rosebud aroma. My hope was that parents would see Stinky as a new form of air freshener and that nine-year-old boys would consider a perfume smell equally distasteful and, ergo, appealing. My hope was dashed. In a research study, parents’ ratings improved, but kids ratings took a sudden steep dive.

I still believe in Stinky. I do. But Stinky will never earn his keep. Still, I keep thinking of ways he might become a reality. That’s how it is sometimes with newborn ideas. Your love blinds you to the realities of their market potential.

Then there was the time I aspired to revolutionize the hot dog business with an item I called the Sea Dog.

My premise was simple—consumers believe hot dogs are bad for them. They think fish is good for them. So they should love a fish tube steak. What a concept!

The ad copy put it this way: “New Sea Dogs are the ultimate in healthy hotdog-shaped products. They’re made from fresh fish blended with low-fat tartar sauce for an absolutely delicious, absolutely different, absolutely healthy hotdog-shaped taste sensation.”

New and different, all the way. Sea Dogs contained no rat hairs or beef lips. But while the idea may have been good for a grin, it was bad on a bun. My dogs were revolting to consumers; the idea of a hot dog skin stuffed with fish held little public appeal.

The lesson I learned here was less costly than the one I learned from Stinky. This time, consumers tested the concept. And while Sea Dogs were being tested on the client’s behalf, 24 other ideas were also being run past consumers. Of those, five ideas were identified as having serious market potential. The Sea Dog wasn’t one of them.

WHAT SEPARATES NEW AND DIFFERENT GOOD FROM NEW AND DIFFERENT BAD?

So what went wrong with Stinky the Pig? What made the Sea Dog dead meat? Didn’t both qualify as new and different? Didn’t they satisfy the Eureka! rule calling for great ideas to contradict history?

Indeed, they did. Both ideas stretched boundaries of one sort or another. But the factors that made them stand out weren’t meaningful to consumers. A wicked good idea needs to be meaningfully new and different!

“Hear reason, or she’ll make you feel her.”

– Ben Franklin

But how can you tell the difference? I continue to this day to search for an easy way. The best answer I have so far is the Merwyn Research system (named in honor of my dad—Merwyn Bradford Hall).

Merwyn is an idea-evaluation system created by the Eureka! Ranch team that evaluates how obvious and self-evident your idea is to potential customers. It accomplishes this by benchmarking the idea against some 50 success factors that were identified from an analysis of 4,000 ideas. The success factors were identified by reverse engineering what separated ideas that were successful in the marketplace from those that weren’t.

Merwyn is a tough, disciplined tool. It doesn’t take into account assumptions, implied understandings, or previous experiences in its assessment of the idea you’re trying to sell.

The 50 success factors cluster into three overall “laws” that I’ve branded as the Three Laws of Marketing Physics. These are the three most important factors when evaluating the potential for success of your new idea.

Law No. 1: OVERT Benefit

Or as customers might put it, “What’s in it for me?”

A benefit is what you promise that customers will receive, experience and enjoy in exchange for their commitment to your proposal, product or service. The customer in this case can be your boss when asking for a raise. It can be the father of your sweetheart you’re seeking to marry.

Law No. 2: REAL Reason to Believe

Or as customers might put it, “Why should I believe you?”

What evidence is there to convince customers that the overt benefit you’re promising will actually be delivered?

Law No. 3: DRAMATIC Difference

Or as customers might put it, “Why should I care?”

Is the combination of benefit and reason to believe something the customer cannot realize in any other way?

Each of these laws has a huge impact on success. Research indicates that all other factors being equal:

• Having a clear Overt Benefit triples your odds of success.

• Having a real Reason to Believe doubles your odds of success.

• Having a Dramatic Difference triples your odds of success.

Note: For an in-depth discussion of theses three laws—how to identify them, how to articulate them, and how to create them—read Jump Start Your Business Brain.

MERWYN IS TOUGH—VERY TOUGH—BECAUSE IT’S A TOUGH WORLD.

Because most ideas fail in the real world, most ideas fail in Merwyn as well.

Your life passes before your eyes as you wait for the scores of your precious newborns to arrive in your e-mail in box. It hurts to see many of your babies bite the dust. But that’s how fragile newborns are. They can be eliminated with the press of a button. Still, it’s a form of mercy killing. And it beats spending thousands, even millions of dollars preparing your product for test marketing, shooting advertising, designing packaging.

Merwyn itself is a wicked good idea. Tracking studies show it has one of the most accurate prediction records of any market research system ever tested. It’s been shown to have an 88 percent accuracy predicting probability of success in the marketplace. It’s been validated in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom. It’s been validated for written concepts, television commercials, radio commercials, direct mail advertisements, and e-mail campaigns.

Merwyn has increased our Eureka! Ranch success ratio considerably. But how do you evaluate ideas if you don’t have Merwyn? And what if you have an idea that’s not necessarily something to sell? The simple concept to keep in mind is WOW!

Wicked GREAT Ideas Make You Say WOW!

As a natural consequence of creating and testing thousands of ideas a year, I’m always learning about ideas—good, bad, and otherwise. The process, I hope, will continue as long as I live.

In my experience, I find that the most wicked, pure gold great, ideas satisfy a one-word criterion. They make you shout …

Wicked good ideas make you catch your breath. A wicked good idea generates uncontrollable buzz, down the hall, around the corner, in the elevator, and throughout the building. The minute you tell it to someone, they shout WOW! And they tell it to someone else, who shouts WOW! It generates interest in the news media and the lunchroom. This doesn’t do much for corporate security, but it’s exciting.

There is no ONE way to WOW! In any given area of products, any given line, the number of WOW! opportunities is limitless.

You get WOW! when you bring together all elements of an idea to create a synergistic impact. It’s like selecting individual notes to make a chord. The harmony is richer, more beautiful than any of the single notes alone. The harmony makes you gasp. It stirs you emotionally and rationally.

Ideas that generate a WOW! use beauty, simplicity, and elegance to appeal to the emotions.

Ideas that generate a WOW! offer logical, tangible superiority.

Just as the 12 notes of the chromatic scale can be arranged into an infinite number of melodies or the 26 letters of the alphabet can be combined to form an infinite number of books, so is there no limit to the WOWS! that can be extracted from any creative problem you may face.

The key is to stake your claim—define your area of excellence, then muster all your efforts into delivering that singular point of excellence.

WOW! ideas are the best at whatever it is they are. They identify a particular area of expertise and establish their entry as the ultimate in its class.

I SPELL WOW! LIKE THIS:

Wicked easy to understand

Original

Whole Solution

! Be magic

WICKED EASY TO UNDERSTAND

Before we go anywhere with evaluating the idea—we need to understand what the idea is. Here are the facts…

FACT: Eureka! Research on 4,000 innovations finds that ideas that are easy to understand are 70 percent more likely to survive and thrive in the marketplace.

FACT: Eureka! Research on 4,000 innovations finds that ideas written at a fifth grade level, so that someone of about age 10 can understand it, have significantly higher odds of success.

“Wicked easy to understand” means that at first glance, you get it. If it takes more than 10 seconds to grasp or 10 words to explain an idea, it’s probably not wicked good.

It doesn’t matter if your challenge is a high-tech computer, a hydrocarbon chemical, a sugar-water soda pop or sliced bread. Complicated ideas never work. Complicated ideas are a sign of hazy thinking.

Nothing delivers the kiss of death more quickly than an idea that is unclear, complex or obtuse. If your customer or your boss or your banker doesn’t understand, you lose. You are the only one who will give your idea the benefit of the doubt.

People need to get your ideas immediately, if not sooner. Unless you live in a bubble, any idea you want to develop has to be communicated to others.

The success of your idea will lean heavily on your ability to involve others in your mission. They can’t wax enthusiastic about your vision if they don’t know what it is. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision, as he articulated it on August 28, 1963, was easy to understand.

“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.”

John F. Kennedy’s vision on May 25, 1961, was likewise easy to understand:

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

Your idea needs to be self-evident. In the hyper-cluttered Information Age, there is no other kind. Self-evident products make you want to pick them up when you see the name and the front of the package. No additional communication is required.

Simplicity engenders impulse purchases. Complexity generates contemplation. You lose when your consumer has to contemplate your idea. In the process of all that contemplating, they begin to look at other options.

“Simplicity is the essence of brilliance.”

– Richard Saunders

How to Know If Your Idea Is Wicked Easy to Understand

Write it down and read what you wrote, speaking the words out loud.

There is something about hearing your idea with your own ear that sparks fresh clarity. What seems easy to understand in your head may well be confusing when committed to paper.

Then e-mail your words to three friends. Ask each to write down any questions they might have about your idea. Process the feedback, make the changes, and send it out to three more friends.

As you clarify the idea, be very conscious about your changes. Sometimes as you bring clarity to an idea, you suddenly realize your idea is not worth any further effort. That’s OK. Better to know sooner than later, after investing significant time and money on a mirage.

ORIGINALITY

Ideas must be original to be wicked good. Same old, same old doesn’t cut it. You have to offer something that’s original, new, and different to get consumers to change their buying patterns.

Wicked good ideas offer benefits that have yet to be experienced and appreciated. They chart new courses and explore new ground. Original ideas generate their own excitement and awareness. Everyone knows Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. But can you name two other Apollo astronauts who followed him? I doubt it, unless you’re related to one.

Being the first, the original, sets you apart. Being the first is newsworthy. It makes people stop and take notice. It’s the pioneers who reap the benefits of fame, publicity, and profits.

FACT: According to Eureka! Research on more than 4,000 innovations ideas with a dramatic difference are three times more likely to survive in the marketplace.