It’s time to give you my most controversial opinion.
One that 99% of creatives may hate.
I think…
…’Brainstorms’ are good. Even great.
Most times I hear them suggested, it’s followed by the collective sigh of creative. Some may even break out in a rash.
Creatives mostly think it’s a waste of time, that they’ll just get a load of terrible ideas suggested from the non-creatives having a go at being creative.
They usually just want to go off and get their own heads down.
To start getting as many thoughts and ways in on paper as quickly as they can.
Almost like what would happen in, dare I say, a brainstorm.
To be fair, you do just get awful ideas if they’re run badly.
They shouldn’t be about coming up with ‘The Idea’. They should be about unpicking as many ways in as possible.
Ask questions designed to find avenues of exploration. Think around the audience’s lives and interests, the world the product exists in, trends and themes… all the things creatives kick about when working.
And it’s always handy to invite people from different departments and accounts to get unknown angles, sometimes even clients. Over time we worked out the people in the agency who were good at unpicking ways in. We’d invite them.
I usual leave the sessions with pages of notes and angles that help me find ideas.
Maybe have a brainstorm about how to get the best out of brainstorms. But, please, don’t end up calling them ‘Mind Showers’, ‘Ideation’ or any of the other toe-curling phrases.
Any creatives who still aggressively disagree with this outrageous opinion don’t dox me or track me down in real life.
