What’s the most effective form of brainstorming?
There’s a real science to brainstorming. The old approach was … everybody gets in a room, and the logical, rational people, which are three-quarters of the people, turn around and become right-brained, free-wheeling creatives.
That’s gone. It doesn’t work that way. Instead, what we have to do is build systems that leverage all of our people — the logical people as well as the emotional/creative people — and we need to bring them together in a system.
That’s what the system that we’ve put together does. It allows us to bring them in. And the simple thing that people can do is make sure they’re answering one of three questions: Why should I care? What’s the dramatic difference? What’s the wow that should get me excited? If it doesn’t answer one of three questions, don’t bother.
Second, what’s in it for me, as in me the customer? What am I going to receive in exchange for investing my time, my money, my trouble?
And third, why should I believe you? There are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there. Why should I really believe you?
So if you go into your brainstorming and you just say OK on a new product and you don’t answer one of the questions, you’ve missed it.
How do you know when you’ve got a breakthrough idea?
If you’re not sure, you already have your answer.
The truth is that many people have never, ever had one that they believed enough in, one they’d be willing to fight to the death for. When you have those, you know it. So if you’re asking the question, you already have your answer.
We think shallow. In our USA Today world, our McPaper McMessage world, we don’t commit ourselves. The only way you’re going to commit yourself is if you truly have a passion for doing something.
When does good marketing start?
Marketing is facilitation. Marketing is the Henry Kissinger of the corporate world. Marketing’s job is to build the alliances between the customers’ intentions, anticipating the customers’ needs, the product development and the packaging. Marketing is there to give the salespeople the materials that allow them to very efficiently accomplish the company’s mission.
Marketing is not something that is done to something. It is the hub of the wheel. Done right, it is leadership; not leadership as in telling people what to do, but leadership as in facilitating technology and sales. It’s taking the wonders the technology people have and figuring out a way to articulate it in such a way that the salespeople can help customers see its value in an instant.
Marketing is not a separate task — it’s facilitation, a communication, an interpretation role. It is communicating with true integrity exactly that which you are promising.
