Emerging Marketing

How To Get Ideas - Step 2

By Nathan Thornton

Step 2. Hang On To Them

To prepare yourself for their arrival, you have to be ready to capture them when they come. You’ll need two things:

1. A swipe file – A box or a file on your computer where you keep all the things—words, images, magazine/newspaper articles, pictures, quotes, or other interesting elements—that you think you might find useful in the future.
2. A notebook – Something you carry with you all the time, that you can use to jot down everything that enters your head that seems interesting or new.

A tried and true way to create new ideas is to combine two existing ones, or add something new to what already works. So your swipe file and your notebook work together to fuel that fire. Keep lists of unrelated things in your notebook. Toss photographs or magazine articles in your swipe file. Everything counts. Everything holds possible greatness. And when you’re hard-pressed for an idea, just thumb through your notebook or flip through your swipe file. Do both. Try putting some thoughts together.  Something will come to you.

Depending on your level of technological prowess or comfort, there are a number of methods to manage your swipe file or notebook. A low-fi but high-trend option is the artist/writer/bohemian standby the Moleskine, a handy pocket notebook with an elastic band closure. It’s tactile: it feels great in your hand and makes you feel like a real creative. A more 21st Century option is an online/mobile program like Evernote, which allows you to write notes, take pictures, and record sounds or voice and access them from your Mac, PC, or mobile device. A dirt-cheap, no-fi choice (and my personal favorite) is a stack of 3x5 index cards clasped with a binder clip (AKA the Hipster PDA). Add a pen, slip it in your pocket, and it’s like a laser-guided butterfly net for catching ideas (and grocery lists, and games of Hangman).

Ideas come at you all the time. Usually they’re other people’s. If not, they’re either not fully formed or put together enough to remember. But with the right tools, you can catch them, form them, and make them work for you.

Related Books:

Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

How To Get Ideas - Step 1

By Nathan Thornton

Step 1. Be Ready When They Come.

Ideas are out there. They are constantly swirling and floating all around you, bumping and crashing into one another.

But at the end the day, or the week, or the month, how many ideas do you manage to capture, tame, and domesticate for actual use? If you’re like most people, the answer is zero. Maybe one. Statistically, people have about one truly great, swing-for-the-fences, light-the-world-on-fire idea a year. And they either do something about it or they don’t. Usually, they don’t. Because most people, through no fault of their own, don’t know how to have an idea.

It’s more or less a cliché that the best ideas come to you when you aren’t looking for them. But it’s true. They don’t come when you’re sitting at your desk, when you’re wracking your brain trying to come up with a way to expand the market for flea collars. They don’t come when you’re in a meeting, driving yourself crazy trying to find a way to cut $400 out of the office snack budget without cutting out the Chex Party Mix or having to downgrade to Chex Intimate Gathering Mix.

But they do come. They come in pieces and they come in parts. Little bits of an idea will come when you’re sharpening your lawn mower blade, or looking for your old high-school mix tapes. Half-formed ideas hit you when you’re comparison-shopping yogurt at the supermarket. They come when you’re not at all ready.

And as simple as it sounds, all you have to do to be ready is to watch for them. To let them in when they come. To be ready whenever you aren’t ready. These ideas won’t be complete, they won’t be world-changers, but they’ll be a start. And once you start recognizing them, the floodgates will open.

Related Books:

Sam Harrison, IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea
Roger van Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative
Jack Foster, Ideaship: How to Get Ideas Flowing in Your Workplace

RIP RGM

By Alli Hance

In this economy today, many companies are having difficulties staying afloat. It is with great sadness that I announce that Rothman Greene & Mohr is closing their doors forever. RGM’s former clients include Arc Mobile, Dove, Buick...wait a minute, who is RGM…you say you’ve never heard of them? 

RGM, the fictional advertising agency featured on TNT’s short-lived drama, Trust Me.  After only 13 episodes, Trust Me was cancelled – say it ain’t so!  Now one of Emerging Marketing’s most beloved shows will only exist as rerun episodes on hulu.

Trust Me focuses on Mason and Conner, a pair of ad men whose strong creative partnership has served the firm of Rothman Greene & Mohr extremely well over the years. Mason is the rock of the team, while Conner comes up with the crazy ideas and can be a bit unpredictable. Basically, in Emerging Marketing terms: Mason = Brian / Conner = Meg. But thankfully, Meg’s not quite as extreme as Conner. 

We get asked all the time – how accurate is Trust Me?  It’s pretty spot-on. They go though the creative process, winning or losing a client, working all weekend just to meet a Monday morning deadline.  What they portray, we do here at Emerging Marketing.  It’s an accurate interpretation of the crazy world of advertising.  

Mason and Conner were able to amuse us every Monday night. (Until, they switched it to Tuesday nights…if a show time is switched to another night mid-season that show is in some ratings trouble.  We should have known Trust Me was doomed.)  The creators were able to grab our attention and show an honest portrayal of the advertising industry.  But clearly our jobs aren’t quite as entertaining to the rest of the audience since the ratings seemed to tank!  Here at Emerging Marketing, we’re proud to be coming back for our 15th season – so long RGM, you will be missed!

Stability Is the New Luxury

By Brian Sullivan

When I began my career, not really all that long ago, I believed that my career path would be linear and that doing a good job created advancement. I’m not saying now that you can do a bad job and succeed, but the opposite assumption that I made certainly hasn’t played out the way I expected.

What I am grateful for, and thrive on, is the fact that I’ve been able to be continuously employed throughout the “dot com” bust, as well as in the current economy challenges. Even as we hear more and more news that things are *maybe* at the bottom and will improve soon, the lesson that we all need to take to heart is that the forces that propelled our parents and grandparents into financial stability are different now. The market is changing. New opportunities are sprouting and the pace of things is accelerating.

That dying concept of stability, of get-a-job-and-do-it-well-make-money-until-you-retire……….is gone. And at least in part, I say good riddance. I don’t want to stop living and being active, rot away and die when I’m 65.5. If you like what you do, that shouldn’t even be a consideration. The flip side is that in recovery sometimes what happens is that all of those still standing begin to jump ship. They go to places that are new because they saw their friends and colleagues get cut, or were over worked and under-appreciated, or realized that they didn’t even like it when things were “good.”

Change management skills are imperative for employers who see this time as an opportunity. The successful businesses will use it to create bonds, extend relationships and collaborate differently with their associates. Their ahead-of-the-curve thinking might be unusual, but it will help them to succeed in the next boom, whatever that is. One way companies can take advantage of the current climate with authenticity is to emphasize and communicate different benefit packages for employees based on the values and needs of that individual and his or her family. Many of us would work for less if we knew that there was a mutual commitment. It will save employers money on talent, and the folks doing the work won’t be so worried from day to day about looking for another job, or switching out of fear.

I sold my expensive car. I gave up plans for exotic travel. No new clothes. And really it’s all fine. I like my job. So, right now: stability is my new luxury.

You Must Believe in Spring

By Brian Sullivan

We here at Emerging Marketing continue to flex and adjust to our clients’ daily needs in this market, and prepare for the coming boom as an organization ourselves.

Several practices have surfaced as helpful to keep things steady. Our own strategic internal communications (ICOM) to associates and to current clients and stakeholders offers transparent insights into our business, continuing the dialogue in a way that makes everyone feel invested. And, we’ve seen this as a business tool for our clients as well. Here are a few insights from our recent work that has focused more on ICOM, change management and the organizational behavior in our client organizations:

1. Keep morale up with constant communication and celebration of the little accomplishments. Because we all tend to be reactionary creatures, the more factual messaging that you can put out to your teams and to your company, the more the associates will operate with fact instead of fiction. An uptick in this practice means that your teams will be better brand ambassadors. They will feel a shared accountability in your success and utilize the tools that roll out. Likewise, in a time that management teams are looking hard at costs and processes, associates need to spend more time and strategic thought on the executive communication opportunities that they have, and use them to prove their merit. 


2. Now is the right time to think hard about prioritization. Many companies that have laid off workers are asking the remaining staff to do more with less. This can create short-term efficiencies and be the right thing to do from a corporate standpoint, no doubt, but as department heads, our clients are seeing success when they proactively manage the priorities. Therefore, it’s important to put a significant focus on your company’s organizational behavior. If adjustments need to be made, make them quickly and with certainty so that there is no confusion. Mixed signals achieve mixed results.


3. Be counter-intuitive. Things that didn’t work in the past will now. Other ideas that weren’t practical before now are. You have a greater chance of differentiating and capturing mind-space right now when there is generally less clutter in the market, and when the audiences are looking for new ideas. More innovative thinking comes in a downturn than in an upswing. But, act fast. It’s true that total recovery will take a while, but we believe that many of the postponed marketing decisions will begin to come online by the second half of this year.


4. Elevate your department or role. Take this time to build alliances in other lines of business, departments and associations. Those who truly partnered and helped each other through the turbulence will be the ones who are held in higher regard and promoted in the next uptick. Prepare for the coming boom by helping those around you and practice strong organizational communication tactics.


5. Take risks and don’t worry so much about what other people will think. We saw a campaign recently in the hospitality sector that focused all around the recession, but in a new way. {Expletive} the Recession is the theme for Morgan Hotel Groups’ campaign. We found it intriguing to read many of the responses posted online were somewhat negative, claiming that it’s inappropriate. Many of these posts were from laid off workers who took offense. Our response is that at least the Group is engaging a future-forward approach by getting out there and doing something. Hopefully it will build business and they will re-hire all of those offended workers. The internal and change management implications are touchy but more importantly for now: will this resonate with the audience? We think it may. It’s a trusted and loyal fan base, looking for an excuse to shed “recession chic” and get back to the attitude and travel that makes them happy. Even if they do not respond immediately due to their own economic changes, Morgan may be top of their mind when they are ready to blow off steam and relax on the other side of the recovery.