If you do any of your creative in house, here’s a fun brainstorming strategy to try out the next time your marketing team is together hammering out ad or direct mail ideas.  Here’s what you do. Decide what you want to communicate, whether it’s a positive aspect of your product or service, or a particular benefit, and then brainstorm ways you can suggest or sum it up without words.

If you do any of your creative in house, here’s a fun brainstorming strategy to try out the next time your marketing team is together hammering out ad or direct mail ideas.  Here’s what you do. Decide what you want to communicate, whether it’s a positive aspect of your product or service, or a particular benefit, and then brainstorm ways you can suggest or sum it up without words.

Here are two of my favorite examples.

Lets say you want to promote that your product’s incredible looks and design will “stop people in their tracks” and that your product happens to be this Benz.  How do you promote that idea without words? You show a day’s worth of skid marks left by passersby who hit their brakes to stop and take a look at the parked Benz.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or, let’s say you want to counter a negative perception that because your pens are disposable, they’re somehow light on ink compared to one of those more substantial Cross pen. How do you promote that idea without words? How do you suggest that you’re the Energizer Bunny of pens? You show your pen next to a fat, huge, infinity doodle in Bic blue ink.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ads like this aren’t right for everyone. By omitting headlines you have to be comfortable asking readers to noodle through the meaning a little, and some could argue it’s bad juju to make the reader think that much. For my money, a good “no word” idea (good, meaning not too obscure) creates a more participatory ad experience that leads to a positive Aha! moment when the reader “gets it”.

Here is one last example from an anti-smoking PSA campaign.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So what kind of brainstorming strategies do you find effective for coming up with breakthrough creative ideas?

Contact me to learn more about how MarketMatch brings these creative strategies to life for credit unions and community banks across the country.