Staying creative with your marketing and PR
So where do winning press and PR campaigns come from when you’ve reached a block in the road? This article offers a guide to help maintain your momentum so that you can reach your creative potential and keep the generating-ideas thrill alive. This article was first published in JAM (issue 52 / October 2013).
Article snippet
Facilitate
Having the skills to make people enthusiastic is what public relations and marketing are all about. So bring that enthusiasm to your work place. Take the scene of a brainstorming session for a new campaign, for example. A nominated facilitator should know when to suggest creativity techniques and which ones will hit home with the team. They monitor the collective mood and energy levels, allow everyone involved to explore issues associated with the subject and bring them back to the brief if they stray too far for too long.
Facilitators are not power hungry. Their job is to sit within the group and remove any feeling of hierarchy that might stifle suggestions. They need to encourage the flow of ideas, ideas and more ideas. To start with, it’s a case of exercising the brain and letting everyone involved know they can share any idea that comes into their head. This removes barriers like ‘blocking’, where some people – introverts, maybe — have trouble being heard over those in the group who are better known for speaking up.
Alternating between group work and solo idea generation within the session can revive the stream of ideas and is a great way to let people get their thoughts down, in notes or on a computer or a whiteboard or Post-Its. Some thinkers respond better to writing, so this ensures ideas are not lost before they have the chance to be recorded.
To read the full article download Staying creative.