I was sitting at a traffic light this morning, staring at the red and in my head running through all of the things that the week promises. Thinking about the speed of things and everything in my work and life that’s going on.
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There's a pretty simple matrix that I first discovered some years ago, used it often during consulting interviews and still use it today. It's helpful for understanding why some people, businesses and brands are successful, and planning your own.
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What if you applied high concept thinking to your marketing and business strategy problem solving? The high concept is usually associated with movies and pitching a story idea. It starts with asking “what if” to catch the attention of the audience and compel them to learn more.
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What exists between you and your customers/buyers/followers/fans is the furthest distance known to man until you discover the tie that binds.
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On a certain tropical island and at a certain time of year on the beach of a certain highbrow resort, thousands of starfish are washed up on the shore. As a service to guests, the resort offers to create a memento of their stay by painting a starfish, though only after it’s been dropped into a tub of boiling water, killing it and drying it out.
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Did you know that a hippopotamus has skin that’s an inch and a half thick and is 25% of its total body weight? For an animal that weighs 1,800 kilos, that’s a lot of skin.
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I have only one creative rule. No Elvis impersonators. I was presented with a creative idea using Elvis impersonators once. It wasn't pretty.
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The concept of thinking outside the box has been around a long time and it’s valid. Just because you’re thinking outside one box though, it doesn't mean that you haven’t made another one.
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Have you ever had one of those days where you learned absolutely nothing, gained no knowledge at all? It feels empty and incomplete. A day without gaining any knowledge at all is a day wasted, no matter what else happens, because knowledge is currency and one day there'll be an opportunity to draw on it.
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I recently received some much-needed clarity. It came at precisely the right time because my visions had become clouded with white noise. And it came in the shape of an Oldsmobile.
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I recall a promotion one summer years ago that McDonalds ran where you could win a free poster of the World Series Cricket teams. You didn’t have to buy anything to get the prize, but you did have to entrench the brand in your head; by reciting the Big Mac “Two all-beef patties, etc etc…” jingle.
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There’s a scene in the movie MIB that offers a valuable piece of insight. When Officer Edwards (Will Smith’s character) of the NYPD turns up for his MIB recruitment interview, the competition is hot. The best of the best of the best (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines) are all in the room vying for a single position in the MIB.
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Think about that for a second. The process of logic can (and does) deliver great outcomes that make significant economic and social impacts. People who just get things done through running the logical process to its end are more often than not thought of as being smart. So by definition, someone not following logic is stupid (the opposite of smart), right?
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