Ah, the bottom drawer. That treasure trove of brilliance we’re all yearning to attach the electrodes, then flick the switch so we can all scream, “It’s alive.”

Every creative I know has one. A bottom drawer chock full of ideas we’ve fallen in love with but didn’t get the same affection from others. Rejected by a creative director, a planner, a suit or (usually) a client. Concepts which are then tucked away for another time. “I’d have won a ton more metal if only someone recognised my genius. Look. Here it is. On a page.” Trouble is, I’ve never had a piece brought back to life in 25 years of trying.

Reality is, bottom drawer ideas make the best war stories. A couple of mine?

For a FIFA World Cup sponsor, I took a single word from the anthem of every qualifying nation and wrote them into an Anthem for the World – 32 nations, 31 words. Sidebar, did anyone realise the Spanish national anthem has no lyrics? I had no idea.

Similarly, for an NRL team sponsor, I wrote a Guy-Ritchie-style content piece. A club legend is kidnapped, pings a help code from the old Nokia phone he had up his sleeve, he’s then rescued by the current players. And everything explodes in the end.

I even wrote a script for Russell Crowe in the early days of him owning the Rabbitohs. I was all set to present to him in person but, unfortunately, Russell was out for lunch with the boys from American Chopper that day. I was advised not to bother. The script stayed unpresented.

As I said, brilliant war stories.

But recently, I had an epiphany about my own “low storage receptacle”. We’ve all been looking at it all wrong. Truth is, the work that doesn’t run can be just as important as the work that does.

Let me explain.

Clients work with agencies because we deliver thinking they cannot deliver themselves. Maybe they’re too close to the business. Or they’re distracted by other areas. Or they’re just not capable of that kind of thinking.

So, when we present back to clients, they want to be pushed. Maybe they want to be a little scared.

It’s the reason it’s become standard to present three ideas on a brief – one safe, one bold, one that’s somewhere in the middle. I’ve been in a million presentations where we’ve tried to talk the client out of the safe one, upsell them to the bold one and, ultimately, settled somewhere in the middle.

And that’s why the bottom drawer is crucial.

Without showing bold work a client will revert to thinking your creative agency is just not that creative. That your thinking basically matches theirs. And they can do the work in-house.

I can hear some of you screaming, “But what about bottom drawer work which doesn’t even leave the agency?”

Well, that’s also playing a critical role – for you personally. If you can put work on the table which is too bold to go to the client, then you’ve established a critical beachhead in your career. You can say in every review or on every other project, you can deliver courageous work. It’s the others who are reining you in.

Put simply, if your bottom drawer is moving the project forward, then it’s doing its job.

So, don’t get disheartened when you gaze longingly into your own bottom drawer. Chances are, that work has already paid for itself many times over.

Now, where did I put that ‘lickety-split’ idea?

Rob Morrison is a rarity in advertising – a grey-haired creative. Rob’s experience includes time as a creative director at Ogilvy, BWM (now BWM Dentsu), George Patterson Y&R (now VMLY&R), Campaign Palace and Wunderman. He now runs his own consultancy – morrison.collective.

Here are two more opinion pieces from Rob Morrison: