Brainstorms not Braindrains

How we ideate at pace, democratically and effectively

When you’re in the ideas business, sometimes it is crucial to collaborate. 

I say sometimes because very frequent brainstorming sessions for low impact work can be draining. Once you decide that something needs a brainstorm it is important to figure out “how” that session will transpire. 

 

Let me illustrate how we’ve been doing this at Rasta off late. 

 

SETUP

 

First, one person would take the lead to identify something as “really important” worthy of a brainstorm. Case in point we just finished rebranding a toy brand and we needed a solid logo reveal. 

 

I dropped a message to the team working on the brand to come up with some ideas for this specific piece of content within a specific timeline. Specificity is important. 

 

 

As you’d notice in the example below, the timeline (as short as it may be) and expectation (what do you want each participant to bring) need to be clearly stated. 

If there is research on the brand on something similar, it can also be shared with the team. As was the case with this brand. 

 

THE MEETING 

First we hear everyone’s ideas. 

The key is to give no feedback during or right after the idea is being shared. We listen to all ideas first. 

Once they are on the table, the conductor of the meeting labels each idea. 

 

Then we ask everyone to pick their top 2 ideas. Still no specific feedback. 

What happens organically is that ideas that are weak, quickly disappear without much discussion. 

Given a meeting has about 5 to 7 people the democratic intelligence will converge to about 3 ideas that lead the popular ballot. 

 

 

We spotlight those ideas and invite everyone to discuss challenges we might have with each of these ideas. We discuss if/how these challenges can be mitigated. 

 

 

The idea that has the least challenges to execute emerges as our recommended option. 

Eventually we decide as a team if we want to present 2 or 3 ideas to the client. 

 

In this case we presented 2 ideas. 

 

EXECUTION and PIVOTS

While executing you will sometimes find complimentary features in an idea. 

You will also find new execution challenges. 

 

In this case, we found complimentary features in our 2 ideas so we decided to merge them.

Eventually, as we were confronted with high production cost challenges for the Flipbook we employed the second and executed it as a stopmotion with the same storyboard: 

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCbq6ygyXix/?igsh=d2pqcHA4ejVrdGVx 

 

The advantages of this method: 

 

1. Good ideas come from everywhere

2. Everyone’s effort, understanding and appreciation of brief is clear for their colleagues to see 

3. Weak ideas die quick and without discussion saving time 

4. Ideas democratically selected, there isn’t one review layer so everyone is onboard 

5. Combining insights, execution from different sources allows for flexibility and pivots in execution 

6. The whole team aligned and pumped to execute ideas that have been selected 

 

The real goal of putting heads together should be to do something better or faster. The fake goal of brainstorming is people in a room pretending to work, in other words shamstorming. Its better to  individually ideate than being part of a shamstorm.