I hate brainstorms.

I hate running them, I hate contributing to them and I hate using them to solve problems.

They waste huge amounts of time and talent and they are no fucking good at delivering decent ideas.

And so six months ago I cleansed my professional life of this Trojan horse of mediocrity, favoring aggregated individual working or two person thinking sessions.

I suggest it's time you gave them the boot too.

Death to the brainstorm. Long live great ideas.

The idea of the brainstorm was developed in the 1930s by Alex Faickney Osborne, the O in BBDO (which he founded in 1919 with his mates Batten, Barton and Durstine) and popularized in a book he wrote on the subject called Applied Imagination.

Osborne believed that when creating ideas quantity breeds quality - that if you can generate enough ideas somewhere in all the swill will be gold dust.

And so that's what he built his brainstorming technique to do - deliver quantity over quality. Kind of like a Starbucks for creative thinking, you know once in a while they make a decent cup of coffee. Brainstormers are supposed to focus on quantity, not criticize other people's ideas, be as 'wild' as they want and to combine and improve existing ideas.

These rules are so pervasive in contemporary business that even the cretins on The Apprentice seem to have learned them. And it is these rules that are at the heart of the ghastliness of the brainstorm experience . An experience in which too many people, with little ultimate responsibility for the quality of the outcome whitter on for far too long to the increasing frustration of the problem owner. Frustration manifestly worsened by the cult of facilitation.

A facilitators main task is to ensure that 'everyone goes home with a balloon' after a brainstorm - that they all feel that their pointless lives have been made somehow better by this semi cathartic experience and by the lovely little warm up games that they all played. Not to mention that they all got to vote on the most simplistic and incompetent ideas with a little stash of post it notes like some kind of mutant pin the tail on the donkey game. Facilitators like participants to have a nice time more than they like delivering actionable output.

But the thing that really pisses me off about this whole technique is that it brings an unwelcome democracy into the process of idea generation. Democracy is great as a way of ensuring that the will of the people is brought to bear in governing of their lives. But it pretty much ensures that blandness is the output we most readily associate with the brainstorm. In particular democracy leads to production blocking which is the loss of great ideas while people are waiting for their turn or having to listen to the irrelevant ramblings of other participants. And if that were not bad enough it ensures that the more polarizing and interesting ideas are lost at the evaluation stage as everyone showers the flip chart with their 'stickies' endorsing the familiar and feasible.

And there is no evidence they actually work beyond increasing morale, team building and other such airy fairy shenanigans. Productivity loss in an inherent part of the brainstorm approach (Mullen, Johnson and Salas, 1991; Diehl and Strobe, 1987) which results from evaluation apprehension, social loafing and the production blocking I mentioned above. Much of this research shows that brainstorms are in fact less effective than individuals working independently.

for my money the optimum number of people for an idea generation session is two with no facilitator hanging on. Two people that have a vested interest in the quality of the outcome and can switch seamlessly between divergent and convergent thinking until they get to the right idea which they both then build upon.

It is one of the reasons that Bernbach was a genius in putting art directors and copywriters together and a reason that strategists should also be paired, or paired with individual creatives.

And if you need any more convincing that brainstorms (and their euphemistic offspring like 'thought showers') are shit think about how easy it was to get people into the room last time you ran one. The only endevour people want to be involved in less is a four hour powerpoint presentation on the new phone system and they will make up the most outlandish excuses not to spend 3 hours in an overheated room with some idiot prancing around in front of a Nobo board for no apparent reason.

Sure have a brainstorm if you want to do a bit of team building and you don't really care about the outcome.

If not pledge today that you will have nothing to do with the bastard offspring of the advertising industry. Refuse to run them, refuse to contribute to them and never ever find yourself voting on lackluster ideas with post it notes again.

"We look for people who are so inquisitive about the world that they're willing to try to do what you do. We call them "T-shaped people." They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T -- they're mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need. That's what you're after at this point -- patterns that yield ideas."

"Lately I've been wondering—is there another way to look at this? What if we took a more basic human truth. Most of us have some kind of passion in a specific area. For some—it's a hobby or interest. For others, it's directly related to their work. I fall into the latter category. If you were to ask me what my "passion is"—I would probably say that at the core, it's creative problem solving. This is pretty broad and incorporates a lot of disciplines that can relate to it. But that's the point. What if we start with our passions regardless of discipline, and look at the skills which radiate out from it the same way we think about how rays from the sun radiate warmth?"

"The majority of those reaching out to embrace this trend have their roots in the UI industry rather than industrial design. While traditional product and graphic design practitioners enter the field with a foundation based on design history, emphasis on form, method and process, those in the UI field come from myriad backgrounds such as software engineering, marketing, and brand strategy. Without a common heritage and education, these designers are more comfortable working with disparate client groups and in interdisciplinary teams."

"Maybe the reason
it seems
that price
is all your customers care about
is that you haven't given them anything else
to care about."

In marketing, we like predictability. The more we feel we know the likely consequences of what we do the more comfortable we feel with it. The accountability of online media helps us to believe that more than ever, the game of the future will be all about data and optimisation. Behavioural targeting offers us the opportunity to deliver and adapt our advertising based on how our recipient has acted in the past. With econometrics, we even go so far as to model likely outcomes based on what has happened in the past. We seek to apply science to what we do wherever we can. We like to get as close to certainty as possible.

In many ways this is just good business practice. But in a future shaped by a ruthless pursuit of efficiency and over-optimisation, will there be room for the kind of happy accidents that can be transformational? Will it all simply serve to make brands too predictable? Is randomness really such an enemy of good marketing?

Unpredictability and randomness clearly have a role in the generation of great ideas. The guys at ?Whatif! ('the world's largest independent innovation company') have built their business on their concept of ‘Freshness’, defined as “finding surprising solutions to problems. The habit of always trying new things, of being comfortable with the unpredictable.” One of their four ‘R’ s of Freshness (the others being Re-expression, Related World, Revolution) is Random Links - "making connections and links between the issue and random items found in the world". One of my favourite quotes on this, from Albert Einstein, captures perfectly why this is so important:

“Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which they were created.”

Rohit Bhargarva makes a good point about what makes ‘randomness’ such a powerful marketing tool:

“…most theories today focus on how attention can be driven by credibility, trust or brand authenticity. While I agree with these theories, there is another force that works outside of any of these. Curiousity. Randomness drives curiousity, and curiousity drives attention."

"To define is to kill; to suggest is to create" - Stéphane Mallarmé

"The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen." -Aldous Huxley

One of my favourite hobby-horses, this.

When the consumer research comes back against your brilliant, ground-breakingly original idea, remind the client that Heineken 'refreshes the parts' failed research.

As did the Dyson vacuum.
And the Aeron chair.
And Seinfeld.
And the computer mouse.
And the Sony Walkman.
And the cash machine.
And Guinness 'Surfer'.
And Stella Artois 'Jacques de Florette'

If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my feelings, and speak my words" -Cicero

Pretty fundamental, this one.

Get to know your customers, not just as demographic segments but as real people. Use your research budget to gain insight into their lives. Find out what makes them tick. Discover their fears, dreams and aspirations.

1. Get out of the office
Put down that design magazine and boxes+arrows article. Go out into the real world. Watch. Listen. Observe.

2. Talk to someone
Talk to the people you are designing for. Chances are you won’t be able to relate to them at first. When you get to this point—then you know you’re doing something right. [Don't just rely on market research and focus groups. Actually go out and talk to people. - Olivier]

3. Eat, sleep, dream curiosity
Be curious. Be very curious. Don’t know how? Find yourself a five-year-old, and hang out with them for a while. Then ask the same questions they do.

4. Do what they do
Are you designing for stay-at-home moms? Take the day off and go to a park. Hover around schools during drop off time. Walk a mile in their shoes. Better yet, just walk with them.

There are certain basic characters and storylines that appear regularly in myth, fairytale, literature and film; archetypes that represent core aspects of the human condition, and tap deep into our motivations and sense of meaning. When we encounter these, they resonate in powerful ways that transcend culture and demographics.

This is why, when penning the original Star Wars trilogy, George Lucas turned to Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces, to help him understand the archetypal narrative structure and characters found in these mythic stories, and why these three films enjoy such strong and enduring appeal. Whether Luke Skywalker, The Man With No Name, Red Riding Hood, Harry Potter, or real people such as JFK, Princess Diana or Marilyn Monroe, there is something primal in archetypal characters and situations that stirs our emotions, stimulates our memory and sometimes changes lives. In developing and managing brands, are we really so different from George Lucas or a budding Barbara Cartland?

Ironically, in this postmodern age when people are supposedly no longer interested in meta-narratives with common understanding, brand development is nothing short of creating a story that people want to be part of; a character with values that have deep resonance which our target audience want to emulate or be associated with.

This is why a Harley-Davidson marketer can say: ‘what we sell is the ability for a 43-year old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him’ Or why Scott Bedbury, in his time head of marketing at Nike and Starbucks, believes that: ‘a brand is a metaphorical story that … connects with something very deep — a fundamental human appreciation of mythology … Companies that manifest this sensibility … invoke something very powerful’.

Bruce says: "Here is natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony, now if you have one to the extreme, you will be very unscientific. If you have another to the extreme, you will all of a sudden be a mechanical man, no longer a human being. It is a successful combination of both. Therefore, it is not naturalness or unnaturalness. The ideal is unnatural, naturalness or natural, unnaturalness."

Translation: In the end, a marriage of qualitative and quantitative insight is most sensible (where possible). But my personal preference is 'culture-led' i.e. cast your net wide and understand the problem/category/brand within its socio-cultural context first (via cultural analysis), rather than restricting your vision at the outset with consumer needs and statistical 'facts'. Like Bruce also once said: "True observation begins when one is devoid of set patterns."

Bruce says: "I do not believe in styles any more"

Translation: Don't get caught up with one one-fits-all models that claim to be the holy grail of branding. Mixing and matching different ideas, innovations, communication codes and media platforms often works best and allows you to execute your brand idea in a much more compelling and interesting way.

"Some people are tall; some are short. Some are stout; some are slim. There are various different kinds of people. If all of them learn the same martial art form, then who does it fit?"

"[W]hen clans are formed, the people of a clan will hold their kind of martial art as the only truth and do not dare to reform or improve it. Thus they are confined in their own tiny little world. Their students become machines which imitate martial art forms."

It's just like dancing, sports, art and just about everything that stirs the soul and provokes reaction: First, you create the structure. You create a perfect, solid, symmetrical and harmonious architecture. (pause.) And then, you break it. You smash it. You shatter it. You completely destroy it. That's when it becomes powerful. That's how you release its energy.

TRANSUMERS are consumers driven by experiences (instead of the ‘fixed’), by entertainment, by discovery, by fighting boredom, who increasingly live a transient lifestyle, freeing themselves from the hassles of permanent ownership and possessions. The fixed is replaced by an obsession with the here and now, an ever-shorter satisfaction span, and a lust to collect as many experiences and stories as possible.* Hey, the past is, well, over, and the future is uncertain, so all that remains is the present, living for the 'now'.

Customers need you to manage their experience.

Great customer service anticipates confusion, concerns, and questions.

When clients face something big, new or scary, great customer service must map out the experience and manage it every step of the way.

I’ve always been mystified that customer service jobs in most companies are among the lowest paid and least respected positions. There should be nothing more important than serving your customer. These employees enforce or kill your brand every time they answer the phone or greet a client. Shouldn’t your most experienced, well-compensated, and engaged employees be serving your customers?

Take a look at how your organization serves your customers from initial contact through follow up customer service. Do you strengthen or weaken your brand at every client interaction?

Ask these questions now, be truthful about the answers, and take corrective action, if necessary.

The real point, I think, is people.

The best things to ever come out of Yahoo, as far as I'm concerned, have been the work of individuals. Not of some hyperbolic purple and yellow machine, but from people, strong-willed individuals willing to buck the bureaucracy. And all the worst stuff the company has done has come out of committees. (...)

What we haven't figured out how to predict yet is which people will perform breakthroughs, which people are the ones that will change everything. What we do know for sure is that some organizations are more hospitable to that sort of behavior than others. Microsoft has gotten good at developing pockets of this sort of innovation. The challenge of an acquisition is going to be: Can the combined company make it a lot more likely that mavericks actually bring great stuff to market?