As part of an advertising agency, you are often made to enter into ideation sessions without any warning. Scary, I would think all this while. How can you just start thinking on a subject you have never ever even thought about? Imagine getting into a meeting and suddenly facing the question: “How will you tell the bank customers to get online?” Whoopsie….never thought of this one.
But over the period of time, I am trying to attune my brains to these kind of sessions, where one can switch off the mind from the rest of the things and concentrate on the matter on hand. When in an ideation session, my most common fear is what if we can’t come up with something kick-ass, what if we as a team are not satisfied with the ideas and believe they are going to be rejected by the client. It’s a business relative, so we can’t just go on and on thinking – we have deadlines to meet. What do you do in that case? What’s a good way to go out and come back again into the room with a fresh set of ideas?
A good book I recently started reading is Creative Advertising. Coming from a non-advertising background this acts like a good tutorial for me on recommended tips for ideation sessions and other important perspectives which a client servicing executive can put into such sessions. Arun Verma’s blog at Cre8ive Ignition is another interesting place where I always get to read his notes on how to instigate thoughts, processes and discover new methods on better mind training for creative ideas. Shifting Focus: An interesting article which recently caught my attention. Don’t miss it.
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Interesting links!