Bad advertising is awful. Exposure to enough of it can make you feel like you’ve gone brain dead. Exposure to a little of it can make you fall asleep. But what happens when you come across someone who has had the kind of adverse reaction to bad advertising that requires immediate intervention? We’ve all been there. You show up at a friend’s house and find him unresponsive on the couch with the TV on. Maybe you catch the tail end of that car commercial that’s been in high rotation and features a dusty truck and a lot of bragging about safety features.

It’s happened again: he saw so many boring, uninspired ads that his brain decided it would be best to just stop working. What do you do? Well, The Quilted Squirrel has created a convenient safety poster that allows even a non-marketing specialist to perform the necessary steps for revival. Because whether he’s faking it or not, you must act quickly.

It’s fun to joke about the effects of bad advertising, but the truth is, there is a lot of it out there. Too many companies rely on antiquated tactics, or don’t have a clear enough idea of what message they’re really sending and who it’s reaching. Or, the idea behind the ad is, simply, not very good. There’s a lot of settling going on in marketing. That great idea just didn’t come, so you settle for something that’s OK. It’s kind of engaging. It might be compelling to a few people. Your family thinks it’s really cool and they love seeing your company on TV!

When a great idea hits, you know it’s the one. And they all start somewhere. Often, they start somewhere you’d never expect. Or somewhere kind of dull. They can come from a desire to be different. A new place in the market. They can come from mistakes made in the past. Sometimes they hit you like lightning, and sometimes you sit in a brainstorm session for hours before you finally, almost clumsily, stumble into it.

It doesn’t matter how a great idea comes about. What’s important is that great ideas set your marketing apart from the competition. They set your business apart from the competition. And that’s important. All ideas start somewhere. The great ones start at The Quilted Squirrel.