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The following is a special excerpt from my book FASCINATE: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation. Be sure to check out my question for you at the end!

Fascinating ideas are precious. They can change the course of a company’s revenue, or change the course of history.

We sometimes treat ideas indelicately, like they’re not worth more than the paper they’re written upon. But early in my career, one experience taught the value of fascinating ideas.

In 1991, the world headquarters of TBWA Advertising was located at 292 Madison Avenue. This was back when a Madison Avenue address was still considered de rigueur for an agency’s letterhead. TBWA exuded the untouchable cool of an international catwalk model: aloof, pore less, slightly bored, altogether intimidating. It was the summer of 1991, when the agency had recently debuted the iconic Absolute Vodka campaign and was now polishing its fame to blinding perfection. Entering the all-white lobby made one feel suddenly self-conscious, acutely aware of some otherwise irrelevant detail, such as the fact that the dry cleaner’s seamstress had recently resewn a button in a slightly off-color thread.

Yet on the first day of my unpaid summer internship, walking into that lobby, I felt no intimidation whatsoever. Not because I possessed that same unattainable cool, but quite the opposite. I was too clueless even to have a clue of how clueless I was. Just two weeks earlier I’d graduated from college wearing my new $29.95 white pumps, my unruly hair gelled back into a Laura Ashley bow, and that internship was mine, all mine.

My first week, I heard a rumor that the creative department staff locked their file drawers at night. Why? So no one could steal their ideas. I was naïve, but not blind, and this intrigued me greatly. What kind of intellectual bullion could possibly fill those files? These same employees casually left personal valuables such as watches and cameras on their desks at night, yet neurotically locked their file drawers? Whatever lay inside those OfficeMax treasure chests, I wanted some of it.

Over the course of the summer, I learned (while fetching coffee) why writers and art directors kept their ideas under lock and key. Those scribbles and words, when applied against a client’s specific marketing challenges, could seed an entire brand campaign. If the campaign launched, in addition to skyrocketing the careers of those behind it, it could generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the client, realign entire product categories, and become a pop culture hero. TBWA had recently done just this: their global Absolut phenomenon all began with one single, hand-drawn piece of paper.

Locking up the ideas was a little extreme. Perhaps. But actually I’m beginning to wonder if people understood something back then that we’ve since forgotten:

Nothing in your company is more precious than its ideas.
And the people who create those ideas.

The business of branding has changed since my summer internship, with more creative opportunities than ever before. Yet in our rush to conquer social media, have we forgotten the value of the message itself? Why have ideas been taken out of locked filing cabinets, and tossed around like day-old lottery tickets?

Fascinating ideas, intelligently applied, can incite massive changes in behavior. Is there a government with enough juice to voluntarily change behavior among millions of people the way Apple can? Hmm.

Any type of ad, regardless of whether it’s a paid placement on Google or a traditional print ad, still needs a core idea in order to reach its potential. The medium might be the message, sure, but it’s still no substitute for a message.

WARNING: Do not assume you can just sign up for a Twitter account, dust your hands off, and then skip the part of the process when you figure out what to actually say. Insight should never be an afterthought.

If you want to shape ideas, decisions, and opinions in today’s world— anything from crafting a PowerPoint presentation to keeping your kids off drugs— you must first understand how to create ideas that fascinate.

As media gets cheaper, faster and shorter, don’t allow your ideas to get smaller. Our greatest value—as employees, leaders and entrepreneurs—will come from the substance of our ideas.

Now, back to the internship. By the time I finished my summer at TBWA, I’d realized two things with utter certainty.

First, I would devote my career to ideas.

And second, I would stop wearing vinyl white pumps.

So my question for you is this: If ideas fuel the world, why do we still charge clients “per hour” instead of “per idea”? How can we change this archaic structure?

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