David Wright

How do you generate new ideas for your business promotion? If you want to create a compelling message with your PR, marketing or design, then fresh ideas are essential.

Brainstorming can be applied to an entire campaign, or elements such as corporate branding, colour schemes, logos, slogans, straplines or social media strategy.

In his seminal 1939 book A Technique for Producing Ideas, James Webb Young puts the idea-creation process into five stages:

1. Gather your raw materials. These are the elements you are working with, which can include physical materials, key facts and overall objectives.
2. Play with the materials by developing associations between each of the elements, building links, looking at things in a new way, and free-associating.
3. Taking a breather is crucial. Put the project down for a while, and do something fun which stimulates your imagination, like going for lunch, taking a walk or switching your attention to another task.
4. The ‘light-bulb’ moment. Allow the idea to pop into your mind. This will usually happen when you’re not actually thinking about it.
5. Test your ideas. Hold them up to criticism and analysis. See if your ideas meet your objectives.

Brainstorming as a team means that everyone is on the same page from the very start. Each team member will feel invested in the success of the project because they helped to create it. Here are some tips for running a successful group brainstorming session.

Have a clear brief

What are the key messages that you want to get across? What does your audience need to know, and what are they being encouraged to do? What is the tone? Having a clear brief will give the team something to measure their ideas against after brainstorming.

Have a moderator

Choose someone to facilitate the session and ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to share their thoughts.

Set the scene

Create a relaxing environment where you can visually share your ideas – use a whiteboard, flipchart or table surface.

Leave judgment until the end

Remember this is brainstorming, not critical thinking. Anything goes. Judging or analyzing stops the flow of ideas. Bad ideas are stepping stones to better ideas, so don’t be scared of the brief. You can edit later.

Embrace different learning styles

Visual (seeing), auditory (hearing) and kinesthetic (moving). Draw stick figures. Enjoy the silence or play soothing music. Stand up and walk around. If your brief is all text, then draw pictures of the different elements and see how they inter-relate. Try mind-mapping and cubing to help this process along.

Take breaks

Feeling stumped or tired? Take a coffee break or switch seats.

Be flexible

Are you too close to the project to really see it? Are you clinging to ideas, even if they don’t work? Allow others to bring a fresh viewpoint. Hiring a creative agency can help you with this.

Keep an ideas box

Maybe you haven’t had a golden idea during the session, but you’ve set the wheels in motion. Your team might have flashes of insight after the session, so keep an ideas box where people can drop in their suggestions. This also provides anonymity for those who are not confident to share their ideas.

Have another check-in

Leave the ideas to marinate for a few days and then come back together. Work through your ideas and see whether they meet your objectives. This is when you can begin to edit and refine.

I’d love to hear your brainstorming techniques. What works for you?

Social media can be an overwhelming and unpredictable forum for businesses, sometimes serving as a hub for customer negativity but also, as we’ve seen recently, acting as the starting point for consumer-driven marketing campaigns – the cancer fundraising campaign #NoMakeUpSelfie being a prime example of this.

If your Facebook and Twitter feeds haven’t been flooded with self portraits, #NoMakeUpSelfie is a grassroots fundraising strategy that raised over £8 million for Cancer Research UK, in addition to generating awareness and sparking a dialogue about a difficult subject.

Originating from an 18-year-old, Stoke-on-Trent teenager inspired by the actress Kim Novak going make-up-free at the Oscars, the No Make-Up Selfie for Cancer Awareness Facebook page was created, asking women to post a photo of themselves without make-up and donate to Cancer Research UK. Within days of going live, the page had 260,000 likes and generated over 80,000 Twitter mentions and 60,000 Instagram posts.

This created an unexpected increase in awareness for Cancer Research UK in the form of tens of thousands of new page likes and an influx of donations from social media users coming through to the charity.

Although the #NoMakeUpSelfie phenomenon was not instigated by the charity itself, Cancer Research UK saw a hugely positive impact from the campaign – but they’re not the first to benefit from a consumer-led social media campaign within the past year.

Nine months before #NoMakeUpSelfie was created, Coca-Cola created the ‘Share The Coke’ campaign as an attempt to make their super-brand more personal. They did this by replacing their well-known logo on bottles with one of the top 150 most popular names in the UK, while also touring the UK to personalise bottles for those whose names were not on the list.

Although this was initially an offline exercise, it grew into a nationwide social media trend, with people sharing photos of their customised Coke bottles on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On my own Facebook feed, I saw people collect the names of their entire family and change their profile pictures to named Coke bottles.

This unexpected digital takeoff led to the #ShareACoke hashtag being used over 30,000 times on Twitter and traffic to the Coca-Cola Facebook page increasing by 870%.

Why were these campaigns so successful and what did they have in common?

Both were based around the idea of self-expression and being one’s self. A personalised Coke bottle or self-photo taken without make-up offered everyday people a chance to showcase their individuality, while also allowing them to feel a part of something bigger – two things people are regularly striving for.

Fully led by customers, Cancer Research UK and Coca-Cola also avoided becoming too involved in helping the campaigns grow, instead taking a backseat and letting users encourage friends and family to join the fun by sharing and tagging.

It seems almost impossible to replicate the events that lead to the success of organic social media campaigns like #NoMakeUpSelfie and #ShareACoke; however, one thing smaller businesses can do is be proactive online and in promoting the individuality of customers – hopefully leading to a successful campaign that increases brand awareness and creates engagement among current customers.

Can you think of any more consumer-led social media campaigns, or has your business seen the benefits of one? Share your story with us on Twitter at @LavaComms!