Inspiration brought to you by the TM Planning Department

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the movie Inception, you may not want to read this post.  (Though, let’s be honest, even if I described everything about the movie, you would probably still want to see it to figure it out for yourself.)

Let’s talk inception.  Not the movie, but the concept.

While watching this movie, I had a nerdy moment of excitement to apply the principles of inception to the world we work in – advertising and consumer behavior.

Let’s start with a few quotes from the movie:

What’s the most resilient parasite?  An idea.

An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.

If we are gonna perform inception then we need imagination.

Sounds like the perfect formula for advertising – plant a very simple idea into the minds of our target audience and let them develop that idea more fully for themselves.  We lead the horse to water but what they do with it, especially given their access to social media, is up to them.  We as advertisers can continue to interact with our own idea to continue to develop it ourselves or bounce off of what others are saying about it, but once the idea is planted it can take on a life of its own.

So now let’s talk about the movie.  I’m so fascinated by the way people have shaped the perceptions of this movie by discussing various theories and scenarios.  Was Cobb, the main character played by Leonardo DiCaprio, still in a dream at the end of the movie?  How did all of the different levels of the dream work?  What would your totem be?  Are we in fact still in a dream?  Did I even see the movie??

But what’s most fascinating to me is that very few people seem to be talking about the main point of the movie – inception.  We have accepted that inception exists and works, that it worked in the movie, and we are now discussing the details around it.  We are focusing on the dream state, what is reality vs. the dream, and how to navigate these dreams but the idea of inception is a given.  The idea of inception was successfully planted in our minds.

I don’t know about you but….mind. blown.