Originality Is Overrated

Breaking new ground might not be the best route to success, Derek Thompson tells Kate Magee.

- Kate Magee

Trying to create a successful new product or campaign? Instead of focusing on making something original, just tweak what is already popular.

At least that’s the thesis of Derek Thompson’s new book Hit Makers – as the name suggests, an in-depth analysis of what makes something a hit.

Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, has come up with two key principles of success: that familiarity beats originality; and, perhaps depressingly for creatives, that the method of distribution can be more important than the content.

“People’s aspirations for novelty are bigger than their appetites,” he explains. “We want to tell ourselves that we love brilliant new products because of their originality. People claim to love The Beatles because they were ‘so original’. But people spend 90 per cent of their listening time with music they’ve already heard. The vast majority of bestselling movies are reboots, adaptations and sequels. People don’t like things that are so new – they like things that are sneakily familiar.”

To create a hit, Thompson advises researching how an audience interacts with similar products, in order to “piggyback” on the myths and ideologies that already exist. For example, within storytelling (books, movies or a marketing campaign), people want heroism: “One of the most important qualities of an excellent story is the ability to create heroes.”

The trick is to not make something that is too obviously derivative. To get the right balance, Thompson proposes people follow father of industrial design Raymond Loewy’s MAYA principle – “most advanced yet acceptable”.