Efficiently hold brand creative meetings

How should a brand creative meeting be held? How can it be held more efficiently? The author of this article starts with the efficient holding of brand creative meetings, and explains the brainstorming brand creative meeting methodology from the aspects of meeting goals, participating groups, specific ideas, etc. It is recommended for those who are interested in brand marketing and brand planning.

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When a brand faces an important communication node, the company will generally organize a creative meeting and adopt the "brainstorming" method to collectively solve the problem. The late famous brand planner Mr. Ye Maozhong was one of the professionals who particularly liked to hold brainstorming creative meetings. He also invented the "holding urine method", which means that if you can't think of a creative idea, you don't "pee". Of course, the "holding urine" method is not advisable, and this method does harm your health.

"Brainstorming" has become a common problem-solving method in enterprises. It is one of the most commonly used methods to stimulate group creativity.

It's quick, easy, and effective. Yet many organizations get frustrated with brainstorming and give up on it. They say it's outdated and no longer effective. But the real reason people get frustrated is that they don't use brainstorming the right way. A good brainstorm is fun and energizing. It generates lots of good ideas. A bad brainstorm is frustrating and demotivating.

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Since “brainstorming” is so valuable, let’s talk today about how to hold a good brand brainstorming creative meeting.

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First, the meeting sets clear goals:

If the purpose of a brand creative brainstorming session is vague, it can easily turn into a "bullshit meeting" where everyone gossips and talks nonsense. Therefore, if you want to hold a brainstorming meeting, you must set clear goals.

The purpose of a brainstorming session is to generate many creative ideas to achieve a specific goal. The best way to do this is to frame the goal as a question. Vague goals are useless. “How can we do better in the integrated communication of our brand in 2023?” is not as specific and clear as “How can we formulate an integrated marketing calendar for the brand in 2023?”

However, it cannot be too specific, otherwise the meaning of the brainstorming will be lost. If it is too specific, the work will be directly assigned to specific people to complete it. Being too specific will limit the brainstorming and reduce more possibilities.

For example, a question like "How can we double sales by leveraging existing channels and current product settings?" may be too restrictive. Before each brainstorming meeting, form a creative brief and let the participants clearly state the background information of the meeting, some existing situations and the preparations that participants need to make before the meeting. This will avoid the situation where participants are still in a state of confusion when they enter the meeting room.

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Second, select more people with relevant but different knowledge backgrounds to participate:

If the participants of the creative meeting have too much confidence in their knowledge background, they will easily fall into a kind of "group thinking", which can easily restrict the creativity of the group. Therefore, we must carefully select participants. At the same time, we must control the number of participants. Too many participants will not give sufficient speeches, and too few participants will lack the necessary atmosphere for the creative meeting. The number of participants should be controlled between 5 and 8 people.

In the whole brainstorming group, some bystanders from other fields or even unrelated to the topic should be introduced. These people often put forward different perspectives and unique ideas. Discussions composed of participants from different backgrounds are the most effective. These people can cover different age levels, men and women, experienced veterans or newcomers.

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Third, do not let people on the scene judge the creativity too early, but guide the creativity:

The most important principle of brainstorming is to postpone judgment. In order to encourage a large number of excellent and extraordinary ideas to emerge, it is very important to ensure that no one criticizes, negatively evaluates or judges any idea. Any idea that participants say, no matter how stupid it may seem, should be recorded. The principle of not judging during the idea generation stage is extremely important and needs to be strictly enforced. A good way to punish people who make judgments is to use a water gun.

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Fourth, pursue "quantity" before pursuing quality:

Creative meetings should not start analyzing ideas as soon as they are generated. Organizers should pursue "quantity" before quality. The more ideas, the better. Of all activities, brainstorming is one of the few where quantity can improve quality. Think of it as a Darwinian process. The more different ideas are generated, the greater the probability that some of them will eventually be selected.

You need a lot of energy and a lot of voices to get a lot of unique ideas. Crazy ideas that are totally unusable often serve as springboards to new and brilliant solutions that can be adopted.

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Fifth, keep the "good ideas" in the creative meeting:

Don’t end a brainstorming session without reaching a clear action plan, even if a bunch of ideas have been generated. Without seeing a real outcome, people will feel that the process was meaningless and become discouraged. The ideas should be quickly analyzed during the meeting.

A good way is to divide the summary speech into three parts: insightful ideas, interesting ideas or objections. If there are particularly outstanding ideas among the insightful ideas that are worth implementing immediately, they should be immediately handed over to the relevant implementers as a practical project. If time is tight, you can use the expert scoring method to evaluate good ideas and use the five-point scoring method to select the best ideas at the meeting. Participants score each idea.

They can freely allocate the five points to the ideas they like. For example, they can divide the five points equally among the five ideas, giving each idea one point, or they can give all five points to one idea. Then, they can add up the scores of each idea and select the idea with the highest score to be discussed later.

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Finally, the convener can thank everyone who participated and, if time permits, invite everyone to have a relaxing afternoon tea or evening dinner together.

Author: Liu Yichun

Source: WeChat public account "Liu Yichun's Brand Business Innovation (ID: shangyeyiguohui)"