Big Lessons, part 3

Looking for new ideas? We asked our panelists at the recent Digital Hollywood panel, Entertaining Advertising vs. Entertainment Advertising to offer up “THREE of your best BRAINSTORMING tips/techniques.” Here are the goods…

Glenn Sanders – Creative Lead, The Viral Factory LA 

1.   Understand your audience: This might seem like Marketing 101, but too many ad campaigns approach their audience in a superficial way. Knowing your audience doesn’t mean just knowing an age range and HHI or that “comfort” and “style” is important to them. It means taking serious time and learning everything about the kinds of things your audience is interested in. Be invested in their interests. 

2.   Discuss and debate: A lot of people think viral is this random thing that happens by accident, and doesn’t take time, energy, thought, or strategy.  Nothing could be further from the truth. A campaign will either go viral, or bust. There’s no in between. To brainstorm for a viral campaign, we spend hours discussing and debating and sometimes even arguing. We pick apart every idea and look at it from all angles. I see more cool ideas thrown away during this process than I saw go to the client on some of the traditional campaigns I’ve worked on.

3.   Get outside: The problem with surfing the web is that your thoughts get locked into the digital, you can get fatigued and start to feel really disconnected.  We often grab a football and throw it around the parking lot, go for long walks around Santa Monica, hang out at coffee shops, etc. Seeing the real world and getting some sunshine helps, and a little physical activity can spark the creative process.

Erik Enberg – Senior Copywriter, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners  

1.    Fire your editor: Everyone says this but it’s the best advice there is. Say everything. Write everything. Follow every lead. Figure out what’s good later.

2.   Make yourself laugh: If something makes me laugh it’s a good sign. Even if I’m laughing for the wrong reasons having fun always leads to something good.

3.   Don’t make it work: The more formal and process-driven you make the creative process the less it works. Being creative is mostly about hanging out, talking aimlessly and pretending you have forever to come up with a good idea even when you don’t. Sitting in a room with ten people a big white board and a stopwatch is the fastest way to end up with something awful.

Anthony Nelson – Executive Integrated Producer, Crispin Porter + Bogusky

When presented with an idea, constantly push:

1.   What’s the story?  Develop and synthesize the story.  

2.   Where’s the drama?  Tension is key.  We need a catalyst to propel the creative idea.

3.   What’s the goal?  Outside of the traditional creative brief, what should we hope to gain for the consumer, the client, and the creative.

Graham Daniels – Creative director, Addictive TV

1.   The way we prefer to work is to keep ideas flowing thick and fast and get everyone involved adding comments, saying why that idea would work, why it won’t work, could it be made to work if it was more like X, or that’s rubbish because Y, maybe try it more like Z etc.

2.   Get enough people together to represent different viewpoints, don’t prejudge – you can take the ideas apart later. Look at the opportunity/task/problem from all directions—backwards, forwards, upside down, and inside out.

3.   Supply food and alcohol, make it fun not work.

Chevon Hicks – President, Heavenspot

1.   Clustering: This method is taken from engineering. Write every idea down. Everything. Then start grouping similar ideas or concepts. Then simplify, simplify, simplify.

2.   No man is an island: Take the time to visit the library, see a movie, play a video game – it all factors into your inspiration arsenal.