Help with making your next idea a real winner
Cup of tea version:
First off, everybody who works with you should be encouraged to contribute ideas. Creativity is too important to be left to the “creatives” at your agency, who in any case frequently make up less than 20% of the staff.
Yet, when we have a problem to crack, a market opportunity to exploit or just want something new in next year’s plan, getting good ideas from good people can prove tricky.
It’s like this. You’re all very tired and you had a management meeting at eight o’clock. Now you have to do a brainstorm. This usually consists of the sales or client service director asking all of you if you have any ideas. In our more sophisticated companies, she will encouragingly say “no idea is a bad one and nothing will be ruled out”.
Three hours later, and…?
It isn’t that these sessions produce no ideas. In my experience they tend to produce ideas in three categories:
Category 1 Ideas are straightforward, unchallenging and easy for all to grasp. They are clearly practical and it’s clear how they would work. They may even be ‘adapted’ from other markets or competitor brands.
Category 2 Ideas are wacky, outlandish and arise from the insistence that “this is a blue sky session”. Why not get David Beckham to sponsor our products? What if we created our own new art form to sponsor?
Category 3 Ideas are unusual or complex or hard to grasp in the atmosphere of the busy meeting. Or all three. Usually, the person suggesting them finds an ally who gets the idea and gets excited… but everyone else moves on.
So what happens after the session?
Category 1 are the ideas that will eventually progress from your brainstorm session. Sadly, it’s far from guaranteed they’ll have any massive effect on your business. That’s for exactly the same reasons that you picked them… many of them are nothing new and do not necessarily belong to your brand very strongly.
Category 2 are never heard of again. They represented a bit of fun for your colleagues on the day and you may feel there’s nothing wrong with that.
Category 3 are also never heard of again. That’s a massive shame because these are often the most interesting, most brand appropriate and thus potentially unique and effective.
They fail because most brainstorm sessions are not structured well enough for them to be developed during the meeting. And there is no structured thinking process in place for them to be “picked up” after the meeting and better explored.
If you believe ideas are the currency of your business, then isn’t it worth discussing how your next creative session might avoid the same old kind of results?
I’ve handled ideas sessions for brands as diverse as Harvester, Barclays, Leicester High Cross and Hyundai. At Spring Thinking, I currently work with clients to apply proper, structured thinking to both idea-generating days and their aftermath.
As a result, bold new projects are past the idea stage and into real development for Warwick Castle and the city of Coventry, to name but two.
So here’s a good idea. Why not talk to me about this, soon?
