Get the idea!

Keith Fowler with some ideas on Brainstorming
 

You’re a Content Director/Marketing Promotions Director/Integration Head in a situation where budgets are tight. Petty much everywhere these days right!!

And everybody is after an idea. Everybody!!!

If your first question is “what’s the budget” I would like to suggest that you try to hold off on the budget question for as long as possible. The “Budget” tends to limit the potential outcomes because every thought becomes tied to the cost.

Also we have discovered that when you do come up with the “awesome” idea, that people tend to find extra money or develop some other way to pay for it.

More importantly, as someone once said, it is simpler to make a big idea smaller than it is to make a small idea bigger.

By now everyone is familiar with the concept of brainstorming. The technique designed to get your mind to go places that logic and predisposition may not normally let it.

But just to recap here are the Rules of Brainstorming…

1) everybody in the room is equal – no pecking order or deference to “rank”

2) Quantity over quality –  do it fast you are trying to trick the brain to give you something unusual

3) If you think it say it – don’t process

4) Freewheel – a stream of consciousness almost

5) Add on to other peoples ideas – gives new dimensions

6) Defer judgment – no judgment, at this point of the exercise there is no such thing as a bad idea (judgment comes in the later part of the exercise)

You’ve gotten together your core team (those people who represent the essential stakeholders at the station) plus three or four people from the team known to be creative. You have your facilitator (the person ready to mediate the brainstorming) and a couple of people to write down every single  idea  on large pieces of white paper.

Ready..and your time starts now…give your self 20 – 30 mins.

So you’ve written down pages and pages of ideas 

Now part two: judgement based on a 3-2-1 vote

3 – a great idea/solution that could virtually be executed now
2 – a great idea that requires some more work before it could be implemented
1 – a great idea but not for this time

From this exercise you should get a raft of ideas that deliver the outcomes required .

The rest is up to you

 

About the Author

Keith Fowler has amassed a vast array of expertise and experience in media in a career spanning 40 years.

He has contributed to the success of companies in Australia, Japan, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, China and more recently the US.  

Keith, as Group Creative Director, was part of the original senior management team for Austereo Ltd which grew to be Australia’s most successful radio company.

In Malaysia, in the role of General Manager Programming for AMP Radio Networks, he oversaw  Product, Content and Talent development and management for seven national FM networks.

Then, as Regional Program Consultant for Astro International Radio, he worked on the development and launch of new FM radio brands Aamar and Power in Kolkata. Later contributing to the revamping of RED FM (Mumbai Delhi Kolkata) working closely with the Product, Content and Marketing teams. Also oversaw Product ,Content and Talent development and management for JAK FM and Gen FM in Indonesia.

In 2009, Keith moved to China as General Manager Radio Operations for Adrep China Advertising Services Ltd as part of the senior executive team. He played an integral role in the strategy, planning, development, and launch of a Sales and Operational hub in Beijing and MYFM a Brand and Product launched over a period of three years into 8 major Chinese cities in 8 provinces. 

More recently he has been Regional Manager for Resonate Hawaii where over time and numerous poke bowls and beverages, Rex Morris and he hatched the plans for Resonate Project Group.

Keith is available for consultancy work and can be contacted at [email protected] or resonatepg.com.au

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