The Hindu Business Line : Try creative aerobics to express-mail ideas

WE sit around a table hoping that the routine meeting would soon be over, so we'd be free. But suddenly the boss asks, "Any suggestions?" throwing everybody on the defensive, the way one recoils in workshops when the coordinator calls participants to share their experiences. "For many people, traditional brainstorming, which is usually conducted as a results-directed exercise, is an excruciating experience," writes Linda Conway Correll in Brainstorming Reinvented, from Response Books (www.indiasage.com) .

"We stress over whether we will come up with satisfactory answers, or will merely humiliate ourselves. Or we remain silent, nodding thoughtfully as others answer. If directly challenged for our ideas, we mumble that we haven't as yet thought of anything, even if we have. We sit through the long silences that normally occur, waiting for the session to end."

The problem is not so much with the people but with the way brainstorming is conducted, declares Correll, before proceeding to reinvent the process, because the current century needs creativity on demand. "Lead time for creative ideation is continually shrinking. How quickly we come up with ideas is often as important as the ideas themselves," she writes, emphasising the need for speeding up the creative process without sacrificing the creativity of ideas.

Correll's solution is `creative aerobics'; a radical new way to express-mail ideas to yourself, she says. "It utilises four mental exercises that develop elasticity between participants' left and right brains," explains the author. Aerobic one is `the fact factor' where you make "a list of facts about your product or assignment," comprising both the familiar `book' facts and the `experience' ones such as `a record of different times and ways you've come in contact with the product'. Step 1 thus forces an extreme close-up of your product from all angles, "like viewing it through a microscope," points out Correll.

Creative aerobic two is `naming names,' to begin the journey `from left brain to right brain.' To do this, suspend your critical thinking and make lists of nouns, nudges the author. Select a physical characteristic of your product and list nouns that satisfy the same criterion, such as colour, shape, feel and so on, as your product. "No matter how you generate your new names, they should all have one thing in common: they are not synonyms for your product. They are what-it-isn'ts," writes Correll, citing the example of Lexus's ad for its SC300 Coupe that read, "A Piranha. In a Parking Lot of Minnows."

Step three is on `how differences attract,' where you find similarities between dissimilar objects. "In the process, the right brain pairs with the left brain to become more involved in the creative process, developing the mental elasticity to slip back and forth between them." The author cites Roger von Oech's book A Whack on the Side of the Head where he found similarities between a cat and a refrigerator, such as "they both make a purring noise."

Aerobic four is to heighten product visibility `by raising/razing your sights/sites.' Here, you create "new definitions for existing two-word phrases." How? Begin with phrases like fishing pole, bow tie, Venetian blind and so forth, with homonyms (words sounding and spelt the same but with different meanings) and homophones (words pronounced alike — e.g. cereal/serial, fare/fair). Thus, a `what-it-isn't' definition of `mouse pad' may be `cushion on the bottom of a mouse's foot,' to get the reader's attention. And "humour rewards the reader when (s)he `gets' the punch line," writes Correll on the payoff. For instance, an IBM ad read, "In the Wimbledon finals every ball will go into the net."

Read also about 10 creative twisters when watching your language, 9 rules for writing ads, 6 key elements of creative strategy, and 11 rules to follow when preparing a radio commercial.

There are valuable insights in the last chapter on `creative thinking from advertising.' Such as Prasoon Joshi's view that ideas are free-floating bodies in the space and that your sensibilities are like a receiver.

Worthy read, if you're ready to receive some wisdom.

BookMark@thehindu.co.in

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Consumers and evolving markets

Flavour of the month

Catching them young

Carving up FoodWorld

Summer of discontent?

Try creative aerobics to express-mail ideas

Hardsell