Brainstorm blunders and how to avoid them
Agency brainstorming sessions can be an invigorating experience that sparks creative fires. They can also be a mind-numbing waste of time. Rachel Quinlan reveals her tips to bringing back the benefits to brainstorming.
New, interesting and exciting ideas are the foundation of great communications activities and campaigns. Whether you’re sitting alone with your thoughts, bouncing ideas off a colleague or staring at a white board in a conference room, brainstorming for those golden ideas is one of the most crucial pieces of our day-to-day work in the industry.
I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the smartest and most creative minds in the industry, participating in brainstorms that left me inspired and motivated for days. However, those aren’t the sessions that I want to talk about.
What I’d like to discuss are the duds – which unfortunately, I’ve also been a part of on occasion. While the fundamental philosophy that there are ‘no dumb ideas’ holds true, it is possible to set yourself up for failure with some common mistakes. By examining some of the usual errors, we can hopefully all achieve successful brainstorm behaviour.
Ah, nothing like an account manager organising warm up exercises for a bit of group creativity
Better still…don’t do brainstorms.
Brief the people who’s job it is to have ideas.
People watch a Rocky style training montage and feel high, but when it comes down to actually training for something, it’s strange that they don’t expect the gallons of sweat, the soreness, the cold mornings, the incessant voices in your head telling you to just go home and watch TV or something.
The same thing happens with brainstorming. There’s an enormous disparity between what people think a brainstorm looks like and what a fruitful brainstorm actually looks like. There is no practical difference between ten minutes of silence and ten minutes of enthusiastic, but dumb, ideas.
From his experiences writing for the cultural juggernaut, The Simpsons, Conan O’Brien said it best: https://youtu.be/DtJ28qOEG1g?t=22m41s
If you need to feel like brainstorming is working, it probably won’t.
42,000 entries (2 of which were scam).
16,000 delegates.
$1.6B.
Sounds like somebody is just a little jealous?
Hi SC,
Two high profile winners that are scam, but how many others got away with it because there’s no-one checking properly? There’s no jealousy on my part – it’s a successful business, but this year has seen a lot of questions raised about it, and not a lot of answers.
If the Cannes Lions is going to be the gold standard of creativity shouldn’t it have a little more rigour behind it than the processes outlined?
Cheers,
Alex – editor, Mumbrella