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February 2008 Article

Creative Brainstorming: Part I
Defining your audience and goals

Imagine you are planning a wedding. How do you determine if the ideas you may have for making this wedding ‘special’ are good ideas? Will Aunt Emily like the music at the wedding while the young cousins still enjoy dancing to it? Eric Steidinger, vice president and executive creative director of the August Jackson Company, poses the question to illustrate how the impact of an idea is weighed against its audiences.

At the start of a brainstorming session, he explains, you need to determine your goals, your audiences, and their differing needs or expectations. “An idea is judged by the effect it has on people, the constituents of the idea,” he continues.

Eric suggests you begin with the following steps:

Define the Constituents of an Idea

• What people, or groups of people, will be affected by the idea?
• What is the desired outcome for each group?
• How are these outcomes prioritized?

Using the wedding analogy again, Eric says the key groups could be called Buyer (the father), Administrator (the mother), Guests of Honor (the Bride and Groom) and secondary audiences (guests ranging from grandparents to swinging singles to toddlers).

The owner/father wants his daughter to have the best possible day within his financial means. Much like a CEO.

The mother/administrator also wants her daughter to have the best possible day, but in a way that she can make happen in terms of logistics. Much like a meeting planner. The bride and groom would be the primary audience and the attendees the secondary one. There will be nuances in how an idea serves the goal of creating a good time for each. “You need to establish priorities” in determining who you must please first, Eric says.

With a motivational event, for example, he explains, you may have 100 sales people. Of that group 20% are responsible for 80% of sales. Depending on what the client is trying to achieve, that top 20% could be the primary audience. If you can get your leaders to embrace change, the other will follow. Or the other 80% of the sales force may be your primary audience. Your client may not want any change in the top 20% at all. Their goal could be defined as inspiring the 80% in a way that moves more of them into the higher producing group.

The Buyer. The Administrator. The Target Audience. Eric recommends stating in two or three short sentences what the expectations of each group are, keeping in mind you may have secondary and possibly even tertiary constituents. Then rank them in terms of priority.

Who should be in a brainstorming session?

All of the stakeholders should be included in a brainstorming session, Eric says. The person responsible for producing the idea, the one who has to sell the idea to the client, and the creative people, for starters. “You can drive good results if you include those with many skill sets,” he continues. Inviting vendors, such as a lighting designer, helps generate ideas and brings them in on what you are trying to achieve from the beginning.

When you have all these people pulling together with the same criteria in mind, you can have a more productive idea session. Should someone wander off on a tangent, the agreed upon goals can help rein them in…nicely, Eric points out. “You can say 'now remember our goal is to…' Or ask the contributor to explain how his idea serves the goals. You may find out that the idea does fit and you just couldn’t see it at first.”

How about length of session?

Regardless of the length of the session, you should always devote an appropriate portion of it to defining the goals and audiences. If you only have half an hour, spend 7 minutes laying the foundation, he recommends. Sessions can run for 4 hours with a break in the middle. Or they can go a week with an agenda established for the various sections.

Themes, coordination, resources

Theme ideas. Before you start generating theme ideas, Eric says you should first ask, “What are the experiences I want to achieve.” Once that question is answered you can better determine what you need to do for the audience to accomplish that and how the theme will wrap around it.

Who runs the session? The quality of a brainstorming session is directly related to the skill of the individual facilitating it. Eric recommends that you bring someone in from the outside with experience to run your creative brainstorming session. A lot can be learned from working with an experienced creative director or facilitator. Working with an expert is a good way to teach your own people about the best practices of brainstorming.

Work sessions versus parties. Eric says his group is often called in to design the daytime sessions while the evening functions are handled separately by the event planner. He recommends that the two be looked at as a whole. If done right, the learning sessions can be reinforced by the evening events helping build an emotional connection to your brand, he explains.

A good resource. Eric enthusiastically recommends Six Thinking Hats by Dr. Edward de Bono as a great book on creative thinking skills and how to manage them productively in group sessions. For more visit the Six Thinking Hats website.

A partner of GEP and Krisam, August Jackson is a boutique agency focused on targeted audience communications. They are specialists in event marketing and productions, advertising, public relations, and design. They connect clients with audiences ranging from senior management to the sales force to the media. For more, contact your GEP representative or visit August Jackson online.

Next Issue: Creative Brainstorming Part II: Generating Ideas, Refining Ideas