Creative Thinking in Action
The Bird of Paradise Seed Campaign
We recently initiated a new contact campaign which has got people talking. We thought people might find it interesting to see how we use the tools that we teach others how to use, ourselves.
This is the story of how the creative process and creative thinking techniques worked for us.
In this case it was a four stage process:
1) Set a clear focus
2) Do some divergent (creative) thinking
3) Do some convergent thinking - select and decide what we were going to do
4) Research and Implement
1) Set a clear focus
This is the stage of the creative thinking process that is most often missed or not done thoroughly enough. A great deal of creative effort is wasted by being insufficiently clear about what we are doing our creative thinking about.
In this case we decided that we wanted to generate a new Direct Mail based prospecting campaign that would stimulate interesting conversations about the training we provide, with past, present and potential future clients.
2) Do some divergent (creative) thinking
There are a great number of creativity techniques that can be used. In this case we decided to use SCAMMPERR. We feature this technique on our creativity programme 'Creativity for Logical Thinkers - The Illumination Workshop®'.
This process is ideal for taking an existing product, service or process and thinking about how existing attributes or stages can be altered to improve it or create something different. So we took an existing introductory letter as the start point for our creative thinking.
The SCAMMPERR process involves looking at each of the attributes and asking a series of questions to come up with alternatives. The acronym stands for:
S - Substitute
C - Combine
A - Adapt
M - Modify
M - Magnify/Minify
P - Put to other uses
E - Eliminate
R - Reverse
R - Rearrange
There are lots of ways of working with the basic approach, and to be honest, we had a free-wheeling session in which we considered many different ways in which we might be able to turn a basic introductory letter into an eye-catching and thought-provoking approach.
We broke down the letter itself into different parts:
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the title
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the start
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the main body
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the ending
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the sign off
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the overall message
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the visual appearance
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the envelope
We also identified other aspects of a 'campaign':
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recipient (names, job titles, data sources)
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follow up (phone, email)
We threw ideas onto a flipchart with no regard to whether the ideas were good or well thought out. We applied the SCAMMPERR 'challenges' to as many of the above elements as we could and allowed thoughts to develop and grow. We often asked ourselves 'what's the idea behind the idea?' in order to identify concepts and themes - and then asked 'how else could we do that?'.
Fairly quickly we realised that the biggest challenge is to get noticed without being so gimmicky as to dilute the brand - Illumine's reputation for quality. We were fortunate that many of our clients regard us and our service offering as being 'different', so we felt that we could perhaps take a few more chances than many other training companies. And anyway, taking calculated risks is an important part of the creative process.
The thought processes we went through included:
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we could SUBSTITUTE the paper for parchment or cardboard
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we could COMBINE a normal letter with a gift (initial thoughts included pens, coasters, food etc)
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we could ADAPT the format by using coloured paper or lots of pictures and Mind Maps®
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we could ELIMINATE the serious, 'business only' tone
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we could include something that could be PUT TO OTHER USES... etc. etc.!
Eventually we started talking about metaphors and decided that it would be good to provide some sort of 'give away' that could represent what we do.
3) Do some convergent thinking - select and decide what we were going to do
Once we felt that we had enough ideas to work with, we moved onto the convergent thinking phase; making some choices and decisions. We used the Six Thinking Hats® approach to think about a couple of the ideas in more detail, focusing on green hat (creative) thinking to overcome the potential downsides of the ideas and develop the ideas further.
The outcome of this phase was a tentative decision to send seeds in a mailing in the hope that it would get us (positively) noticed and strengthen our reputation for doing things that are a bit different - but not too weird!
4) Research and Implement
This phase involved us in researching safety and legal issues, costs etc. We trialled a number of different letter formats and wordings before settling on the letter you may have seen. It was when researching possible seed types that we came across the highly distinctive Bird of Paradise seeds and knew that we had something that would, at the very least, be remembered.
We still had to source the seeds, print the planting instructions, decide on lists and posting schedules, plan the follow up, buy the glue dots - and generally ensure that we had covered everything necessary to take an idea to fruition. We were mindful throughout the process that without ACTION, IDEAS are of no use.
Post Script
Appropriately enough, the Bird of Paradise flower traditionally signifies:
'beginnings, exciting and wonderful anticipation'.
It is too early to say whether the campaign has been successful. Certainly, our initial conversations show that the seeds and the letter are being remembered and that the approach has been sufficiently 'different' to encourage people to talk to us about the courses we run and how we do business. But if the campaign fails to meet the high expectations we have of it, we'll learn from it and try something else - that's what creativity is all about!
So that's how we did it... just think how your business could benefit from learning techniques like this - and people who know how to use them!
sow... nurture... grow... your Bird of Paradise seeds
engage... inspire... grow... your people
Find out more about the Bird of Paradise flower (and us) at www.illumine.co.uk/nurture
