The brief

The brief needs to be great. An old account director I worked with said “shit in, shit out”, a blunt way of putting it and absolutely right. Don’t expect much if your brief is a quick email 30 minutes before meeting. We need insight and aims that allows everyone to see what needs achieving, on behalf of the company and the target group. For that I like to have data driven insight, human insight, competitor reviews and brand knowledge, so that you can gather some essence that needs to be conveyed through the idea. Make sure you have some rich topic areas ready for creatives to focus on. It’s not strategy, it’s necessity.

Check the brief

Unless you are the client, get the brief approved by them first. This will save so much time and money, it gets their buy-in and they may want to be in the ideation sessions as well. Giving them a heads up on what is about to happen is in your own interest and gets the best for your client.

Who to invite 

Recruit people from different backgrounds. I usually work on projects that have technical executions so I like to have at least one person who can connect the ideas to reality. You need to be careful here though, avoid people that think “NO” until convinced it can be done, or contemplate purely on their technical knowledge at present. You want the people that think “YES”,until they know it can’t be done, by anyone, in the world, ever. Tempering ideas with reality is great, but when it’s done with no imagination it restricts the room. Ideally you need slightly crazy quick witted minds that jump between two seemingly abstract subjects and make something new.

Numbers 

When it comes to the amount of people, not more than 5. So many people invite tens of people on zoom style idea sessions and it’s rare that any more than 5 in the group actually contribute. You’re just wasting money by having that many people not thinking in the room. You’ll often find loud voices dominate and the other 10 will just listen and go. If you have more than 5 great minds, split up the sessions into multiple groups. This can create team competition and is great motivation for getting brilliant ideas.

Competition 

I always like to have more than one group working on ideas. Once you know another team is working on the same brief, people naturally get competitive. You can make the most of this by getting each team to present back their ideas in front of the other team, which can lead to people combining great ideas together to make them even stronger.

Atmosphere 

Create a relaxed open atmosphere early on by establishing that anything is up for debate. This may mean that you need to be the one that deliberately ventures the stupid stuff first. Make people comfortable to share anything.We don’t have time to be embarrassed in these situations, getting things wrong is part of knowing what is right.

The start of the meeting should be like a relaxed meandering stream, seemingly aimless, covering all ground but finding its route and gathering pace.

I’m not alway a great advocate of ice breaking techniques, but this can work for new groups and force people to feel more comfortable together. Set a minute brief or get people to mock up a quick advert for the brand or product involved. It will start to make people think about the product attributes, its uniqueness and how to portray it in a clever way.

Timing 

I’ve found in small groups a 1 hour session can get you a lot of raw ideas, but you need to think of the effort linked to the size of the brief. I’ve worked in places where a half a million pound budget brief is given an hours thought. Which I think you know, isn’t the winning level of effort. Naturally for more complex briefs you need more time and creative minds need more time to form connections with other unexpected areas.

Set a meeting just to brief. Brief people before ideation meetings. If you arrange a meeting for a Monday, brief the week before. Let their minds make connections with the world they interact with over the weekend.

Don’t leave it at 1 session, remember to book in follow ups. Schedule the next meeting while you’re arranging the first. Don’t give up and make do, if you book multiple sessions it will allow ideas to evolve keep momentum going. Ask groups to present back so they have to think it all through.

Bring ideas 

By setting up a separate briefing and ideation session you are creating space for people to have ideas before the next meeting. Make the most of that and book them time to think on their own about the brief and bring ideas to the session. These ideas will only get stronger with the addition of the group.

Ask people to present their ideas 

This may seem a simple step, but a lot of people don’t want to do this. Putting an idea into a more formal construct forces people to really challenge themselves on whether it makes sense. It’s easy to throw out a half idea in a meeting and rely on others to finish it off. Making people present back may add pressure but also adds rigour. And if these ideas are to be innovative and on brief they need to be mentally kicked around.

How to lead / Provoke 

You may have set the meeting, but it’s not really your meeting. As the creative leader on this brief you probably wrote it, have ideas already and have slipped a few into the final deck. However, you know the team of great minds will change all that if you can get the most out of them. You are there to listen and trigger them. Guide people back to topic when it goes too far off brief, question how an idea will articulate its self in any channel. Make sure you capture everything so that nothing is lost.

When things get too quiet you either need to ask questions or encourage people to talk. If you are prepared you’ll have a list of things to ask at these moments. But remember that a moment of quiet can also be a good thing, so don’t be too worried, it means people are thinking.

Quantity and when to quit 

I’ve been frustrated over the years by teams that have wanted to quit ideas sessions after 30 minutes “We’ve got some great ideas there, I’ll send them off to the client”. It is highly unlikely they are great ideas after 30 minutes, but if they are, how do you know? You know this by spending time coming up with all the bad ideas that aren’t as good. This is where quantity allows you to see the quality. Keep going with ideas until you run out of time. And even then if you don’t believe in an idea, you’ll need to keep at it until you’re happy.

Capture everything 

I’ve always been amazed at the amount of people that come to an ideas session with out pen, paper, tablet, voice recorder, etc

Everyone should be writing things down. Unless you write down your interpretation of the idea, it won’t be the idea you wanted.

Own the ideas, own the right to make them as you want them. Capture all the possibilities and thoughts from the mind power in the room and make sense of it later.

Add speed with AI 

I have been using open.ai very early on and have prompted to develop ideas for campaigns across various channels. So far I’ve found AI finds ideas that will speed up material for that first meeting. All the early stuff you would have come up with is in there and that’s not to say some couldn’t be used as initial ideas, but it still needs a lot of work. You can provoke it to think weird and get some surprising results.

I’d use it much like you’d use a book or the internet in general. There are ideas there that will get you faster to other on-brand specific ideas.

Presenting ideas 

Rationalise and find evidence for change. The resistance to try something new is within everyone. When you are talking to someone who manages a budget, they are paid to worry about every penny of where that budget is going and showing how it performs.

You need to create a logic path from brand to customer. Show the research, link brand attributes to topics, define its area in the market and show evidence of idea acceptance. So when you come along with a groundbreaking idea you have the full story that makes sense of it.

If you don’t have that evidence then you need some test data to show a small sample of acceptance. When you have time, test your ideas before presenting them, even if it’s only to people you know that are in the same target group. Record their response. Collect video footage, audio, polls, written feedback and show a test playback in your presentation. New ideas do come with risk, but reduce it by presenting some early feedback.Add speed with AI