May 25, 2021
It’s fun. Okay, maybe it’s a little fun, especially the bonhomie of the conga line around the conference table. Just don’t think too hard about all the jobs, including yours, that depend on the results.
But it’s actually a pretty serious undertaking. The product launch could sputter and considering how much money you’ve spent, jobs could be on the line, including yours. Did I mention that you’re presenting at nine on Monday morning? Cue, flop sweat.
Everybody is creative . Human beings are creative creatures by design, but not professionally creative, which means they can take an oddball product and use a strategy to give it a twist that people will remember forever. Sorry, but the fakers and wannabes need to get out of my office.
Everything is Woodstock hunky-dory. No, everything is not copacetic all the time. Put seven or eight highly creative, opinionated, and sometimes unshowered peeps together, there will be squabbles, jealousies, and worse.
The Four Martini Lunch Solution . Based on all the bull we’re served up from Mad Men, you would think that all marketing problems are solved posthaste over a five-martini lunch. I wish!
Just because you call it brainstorming doesn’t mean it is. Brainstorming is a process that generates focus on the problem that needs to be solved. It’s not the five minutes at the end of the meeting where the boss wants to come up with a new theme for an event.
Everybody should participate in brainstorming . Like sales, marketing, ex-officios, significant others, or the guy delivering from the sandwich shop, Brainstorming is about building great ideas, not consensus.