“Looks like a category 5 brain hurricane in here” - Justin Poirier
Brainstorming is not an exact science, it’s the continuous exhaustion of a creative muscle. Brainstorming is like going to the gym, you’re working out so that when you get in front of the client you can perform. So that when you present to the client, you know that you’re putting forth your best ideas and you can back them up.
Kill Your Darlings
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when brainstorming is marrying an idea. Whenever you brainstorm, you should get your favorite idea out and then move on immediately. This is good because it helps you to move on when your ideas get killed (mourning the death of an idea is one of the biggest wastes of time in a brainstorming session). Brainstorming should be a collaborative experience, so just because your idea doesn’t make it doesn’t mean that you can’t have an impact, or that you’re not helping. Often some of the best ideas take pieces from multiple concepts and blend them together, just because your best idea gets killed doesn’t mean a piece of it can’t live on. It’s also important to listen to the feedback of the other people in the room. It’s easy to shut down and feel offended when your idea gets blown up, but chances are that if you’re in that room, you’re being paid to come up with ideas, so come up with some more.
Research the Brand
If you’re in a meeting and your ideas don’t tie back to the brand, they’re getting killed, they might not get killed in that meeting, they might get killed later, quietly by the person putting together the deck at 4 am the morning before it’s due, or they might get killed by a client in the meeting who’s wondering why 16 people came into their office to waste their time. Simple things like knowing what the client has done before and what examples they mentioned liking in initial meetings can go a very long way in helping to know what ideas are dead on arrival. For that matter, it’s also very valuable to research the brand's competitors. If you have two products that do the same thing, chances are that there are only so many ways to show how effective they are. You want to pitch a concept that is unique to that brand because people love brands. Consumer’s identification with brands often overshadows the perceived benefits. This is why people collect items from a brand because they want to feel like that brand says something about who they are. This is why aspirational brands work. When you’re brainstorming concepts, you should think of as if you’re selling the brand with the product attached to it. Once you get the concept sold, then you can lean into specifics and unique attributes, but that first concept needs to have a firm grasp of who their brand is and how it should make people feel.
Consider the Channel
When brainstorming you should think of where the consumer is going to view your ad. Is it on a phone, desktop, TV, Instagram Story, Sponsored Post, or banner ad? Each of these channels has different ways to optimize your content and it’s important to consider that. For instance, you wouldn’t want to present a voiceover heavy concept for a mobile ad where people are more likely to have the sound turned off. It’s also good to review best practices so you’re optimizing for something as simple as the aspect ratio of the frame, the duration of the ad, and potential placement.
There are No Bad Ideas
Well there are and in brainstorming they’re mostly bad ideas, but there’s a lot of good ideas in bad ideas and sometimes it takes a bad idea to get to a good idea. For instance, I like to write all of my ideas down, especially the bad ones, because I know that there might be a kernel of something in one of them that might grow into something amazing (one bad idea was just the two words, “Mouse Rollerskates” and I think about it every day). It might not be the whole idea, it hardly ever is, but there might be something in the execution that is brilliant, or maybe it’ll click with someone else in the room and they’ll remember something amazing.
Brainstorming is about flexibility and endurance, the more you’re willing to listen and learn, the better your ideas will become.