Ideational realization

I recently tried to explain my passion for advertising to my grandma.
"Sounds like fun," she said "However, where do you always get all those ideas from?"
"I don’t know," I replied, "I guess, I just have them."

I thought about it for a while and realized that this is not true of course. First of all, I don’t always have ideas, much less good or even great ones. Plus, output is only produced by the right kind of input. My brain is like a sponge and will only release an idea drop every once in a while if it is soaked with impressions and sensations. So I thought about it for another while to find out what really inspires me.

Here is my random, incomplete Top Ten list of inspiration:

• Failblog
• Really good ads
• Really bad ads
• Err, well… getting drunk
• My job as a fair and event hostess. In the past two weeks alone, I have worked at a cardiologists convention, at an incentive for fork truck staff and at a gala for gifted teenagers.
• Children
• Using my energy legs to clear my mind – running, snowboarding, biking, hiking
• Gossip magazines and British tabloids
• Public transport: The tourists’ dialects and cultural differences, the teenage wisdom and the gay couple arguing about what to eat for dinner, the distinguished gentlemen’s conversation with the punk… The day I can fit that in a car, I’ll give up trains and subways.
• And here is my number one source of inspiration: My friends. This summer for example, we found some old eggs. Instead of dumping them, we built a catapult and attacked our friends in their boat. Crazy? Sure! Nonsense? Of course! That’s the point.

Where do you get your ideas from? What kind of input do you need for great output? Everybody is different and it is worth to think about it so you can utilize it better for yourself and for great ads. I believe that everybody can be creative; it’s just a matter of attitude and inspiration. Take my grandma: Although she thinks she could never do“that”, she told me the most amazing stories and fairytales when I was a kid.