Hands up if you love a good brainstorm.
And I’m not talking about any new-fangled, super-enlightened group-think session where you might, I don’t know, have to stand rather than sit.
No, I’m talking about the classic variety. The ones where you all take your place around the table and have a strictly designated 45 minutes to smash out some breathtaking concepts for this really important thing because, well, Mike from sales is heading out to a new business meeting at 11:30 and, working back from the timeline, we need the deck to be done and dusted by end of play on Thursday. You know, those ones.
Despite the desired aim of precipitating a full-on ‘ideas shower’, these types of brainstorm somehow have a habit of transforming any room into a creativity black hole.
Desperately seeking something
Even the brightest people, doing their best to channel Rodin’s The Thinker, morph into variations on a theme of the ‘thinking face’ emoji, gently nodding to themselves or stealing furtive sideways glances at equally baffled colleagues. Awkward silences ensue as they furiously sieve the recesses of their mind for nuggets of inspiration. For something. Anything.
And all of this happens under the watchful gaze of ‘The Holder of the Pen’. The exalted figure who stands before the assembled crowd, repeating — in ever-more-hopeful tones — the mantra that “no idea is a bad idea” in the face of a growing body of Flipchart evidence that strongly suggests otherwise.
“Let’s run that one up the flagpole, shall we?”
Gradually, eyes drift to phones, and the internal screams to be set free — suppressed up to this point — start to manifest themselves through awkward seat-shifting body language. And then, finally, it’s all over. Relief descends as the session is drawn to a close with that all-too-familiar (but less-than-sincere) rallying call: “Think there’s some good stuff in there, guys. Thanks, everyone.”
Finding blue skies on grey days
It’s hardly the most productive environment and yet there’s a reason this type of session has yet to be discarded on the corporate scrapheap: coming up with good ideas is hard. It’s called creative endeavour for a reason. Brainstorms are an attempt to engineer the right conditions for seeds of inspiration to germinate and flourish. It’s just they are often a bit of a blunt instrument — a somewhat clumsy attempt to forcibly align the stars.
Their inherent weakness is that creativity and idea-generation rely on a degree of alchemy. Yes, everything needs to be in place — right people, right place, right time, right situation — but you can’t pre-order a sprinkling of magic or fairy dust to give you more than the sum of the parts.
You can’t pre-empt those moments when, out of nowhere, you get an exciting new perspective on something you’ve been staring at for ages, and there’s a sense that, somehow, it all fits together.
The stuff of dreams
According to legend, it happened a bit like that for Paul McCartney, who claims the melody for Yesterday came to him in a dream — and we’re talking here about a tune that has been voted the number one pop song of all time and has so far notched up an estimated £20m in royalties.
A pure creative miracle? Maybe, but worth also remembering that it happened to one of the most significant songwriters in the history of pop music. The path had been cleared, lit and signposted to help inspiration find its way to a mop-haired Beatle in Wimpole Street that night. The rest, as they say, is music history.
But everyone has these ‘McCartney’ moments. It might be when you’re in the shower, on the bus or out on a run rather than when you’re asleep, but inspiration strikes us all at unlikely times to offer up unexpected answers (often to challenges we were unaware we were even thinking about). When this happens, it’s a reminder of the complexity of the thinking process, the interplay between our conscious and subconscious minds, and the importance of giving thoughts the space and time to breathe.
Rational assessment
Whether the ideas generated in these moments of inspiration are any good or not is a different matter — not every lightbulb moment is the creative equivalent of Yesterday. But it’s worth listening to them. And when it comes to business communication, it’s certainly important to judge them against the right criteria. It might be a nice idea but does it fit with the wider strategy and answer the business challenge at hand? Is it ‘graspable’? Does it bring clarity or a new perspective? Can it be delivered in a way that works for the audience?
And that’s not forgetting the fact that ideas are just starting points. Ideas need to be nurtured, developed and refined if they are to grow into fully fledged concepts. Just ask Sir Paul. For a while there before the lyrics were nailed down, he sang the unlikely words ‘ scrambled eggs’ in place of ‘yesterday’. No doubt it took hours of song-writing craft, months of patience and probably a word in his ear from John but he got there in the end.
Ultimately, the story of Yesterday underlines the contradictory nature of the creative process. The combination of circumstance and coincidence. Structure and serendipity. The importance of giving oxygen to that elusive spark of inspiration, whether it comes to you in a dream or, just maybe, when you’re next sat round that boardroom table.
If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration to make your marketing content sing, then let’s have a chat. Give me a call on 07903 942990 or drop me an email.