This is the first guest post on my blog by great and very creative guy Michael Trenerry who have chosen Finland over Australia. You can read more about Michael and his company iKONIC here as well as follow him on Twitter and read his blog to get more of his wisdom. Enjoy!
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Over my time
I have sat in many idea generation or brainstorming sessions both
within media and advertising agencies, hotshops and on the client side
or with the client. These sessions can be to generate ideas for an
individual campaign, a long-term strategy, a product launch or they
might very well be for your next new business pitch.
Amongst these sessions though, only very few have been in my opinion
highly successful. The reason is quite simple. There has been a lacking
brief, lack of structure, no leadership and no real collaboration.
The Brief
Mentioned in my earlier blog, the brief is vital. What exactly are we
aiming to achieve from the session. What are our objectives & what
do we already know. Sessions take time and that means money for you, so
lets be sure that we have a good brief that outlays exactly what we
intend to achieve during the session.
Structure and Process
I don’t want to take the fun out of these sessions because that is what
they are all about but you do need some structure to tackle the brief.
The structure does a few things. It ensures we maximise the time we
spend in these sessions constructively. It ensures everybody gets to
put ideas in. It ensures we cover all the points we need to and most of
all it ensures that when we leave & finish the meeting, we leave
with an action list of clear indicators & the key persons involved
in ensuring those tasks are met.
A good session while structured doesn’t really feel structured. Like
the term brainstorm, we start by dumping down lots of ideas. From these
ideas we decide which are the most innovative and interesting and which
best meet the objectives of the brief. When we have a few good ideas we
can move forward – expand them, dig deeper, pull out insights, and
create example case studies and so on until we feel we have our winning
idea. The winning idea will often come in a second or third session
after we have analyzed our key ideas in more detail.
Make sure in all cases before a meeting is over that everybody who
has attended agrees with the idea & that everybody is cleary aware
of what they are required to do to get to the next stage.
Session leader
In all cases, there should be a person in the session that is the
session leader – the person who structures the workshop, understands
the brief in minute detail, a person that listens to others, mediates
and writes ideas down. This person should be skilled in running
ideas/brainstorming sessions and a creative mind. The person should
help the group move along in a clearly structured manner.
Without this person, we essentially normally end up having lots of
ideas but no central focus – people walk away from the session with a
smile but when they sit down, they don’t really know what next…
Collaboration
I have been involved with many new business pitches. The great ones
show real collaboration, they show that the team worked brilliantly
together and they all believe in the idea and their ability to deliver
it. The successful sessions are fun, a birth of great ideas from
everybody and in the end a united approach that shows very clear
collaboration. The unsuccessful ones seem to have people working in
modules – one digital guy creating digital ideas, one print person
creating print ideas and one television person creating television
ideas – no integration between the overall idea. The idea should show
that all parties have worked together seemlessly on all aspects of the
project.
I could continue to write more about good and bad sessions but to
wrap it up, just remember what these sessions are for! Its business, we
all have limited time and resources so plan & think strategically
at all times BUT also remember to be super creative – don’t let the
structure and process ruin the creativity required to build great ideas…