The biggest enemy of creativity is reasonableness.

Precisely because it is reasonable. And being reasonable is a good thing. It's kind of how you prove you are an adult.

And let's be honest, it's unreasonable to refuse all but a few changes to an idea.

It's unreasonable to offer no proof that something will work other than gut feelings.

It's unreasonable to prefer illogicality over logic. Silliness over safety. And to police the fictional rules of a fictional world.

But creativity demands it. And them's the rules.

And nowhere have we felt that more powerfully than at the first Good Ads Matter Ad Festival in Mumbai, which we were lucky enough to be invited to by Himanshu Singh Gurjar, the mastermind behind this creative community championing fearless advertising.

We wish every exhausted strategist, marketer, account manager, creative and director worn down by a relentless procession of perfectly reasonable requests could have been there with us in the gorgeous Aditya Birla theatre. To be revived by the extraordinary creative energy. 

Because for one glorious day we were immersed entirely in creativity that had triumphed over reasonableness. We watched the best Indian advertising of the last 25 years. We were inspired by director Tarsem Singh and actor Aamir Khan's still unquenched passion after lifetimes of success. And we were moved by the tributes to legendary Ogilvy India founder Piyush Pandey and his immortal body of work.

And inside this cocoon of creativity the truth became clear once again. The work that survives. The work that lodges indelibly in people's hearts and minds. The work that builds brands and becomes part of culture. Spoiler alert: it is not the work designed to have a good meeting.

It's the work that is heroically unreasonable. The silly, the emotional, the visceral, the original. The work that refuses to be safe. The work that hits you straight between the eyes and in the heart.

They're simple ideas. That go all the way. Made epic by hundreds of tiny decisions that somebody refused to compromise on. Because for something to be great, almost everything has to go right. For it to be average, often only one thing needs to go wrong.

Take the M-Seal 'Will' ad. A simple story of a bastard son trying to change his dying dad's will. It's outrageous, as the odious son forces the dad to add nought after nought after nought to swell his share. Then, as he walks off triumphantly and his father draws his final breath in the background, a drop of water from a leaky pipe (should’ve used M-Seal) plops onto the will and wipes away his ill-gotten inheritance. It's sacrilegious and impossible to forget.

Or the famous Fevicol 'Bus' commercial, where the glue is so strong everything stays stuck to it… even the passengers on a bouncing, overcrowded bus. So simple. But it's brought to life with such epic attention to detail. Every bump, every head shake, every chicken swaying to the beat, building and building towards the glorious product reveal painted on the back of the bus as it bounces off into the distance.

Or the Nike cricket commercial. Already an eye-popping, maximalist celebration of the game, with an entire city block swept up in cricketing madness.

And then an elephant.

Why an elephant?

Why not?

It's an image still lodged in our brains weeks later.

And that's the point.

Because beyond the reasonable lies the distinctive. And the distinctive builds brands. And creates culture.

It's true of the past. And it's never been truer than now. Because the easier it gets to make things, the harder it becomes to make things that stand out. 

So we have returned to London. To our fledgling new agency. To the familiar challenge of making extraordinary things happen in a world full of perfectly reasonable reasons why they shouldn't.

But we have returned full of energy. With a determination to find charming ways to be unreasonable. 

Because we are reminded that the people who go where logic can’t, and who find the people who want to go there with them, make the work that makes us laugh, gasp and feel things decades later.

The authors were speakers at the Good Ads Matter Ad Festival held in Mumbai on 16 October. They were former chief creative officers, AMV BBDO, who have now launched their own agency which is yet to be named.