Yes, There's a Method to
Our Madness.
When we formulate strategy for our clients, we take a technology agnostic approach. Before we suggest building a website, developing an e-mail campaign, or spending even a single dollar toward paid advertising we ask the right questions from the get-go to ensure we understand your business objectives and the unique set of challenges you face. Since we're not tied to any one specific digital platform, we can focus our energy on finding the right solution for you. This isn't always the easiest way, but our clients sure appreciate it.
You'll no doubt hear a similar pitch from other agencies. What makes us different is the approach we take to generating our ideas and business solutions. Like a good stock portfolio we don't specialize in a single industry vertical. It's not our thing. We believe diversity in the clients we partner with is equally as important as the diversity of our employees. Because we do this we can easily leverage out-of-industry insights and trends to keep ideas fresh. You win because you'll be doing things your competitors aren't. We win because it keeps our creative muscles flexed.
A Six-Step Approach To Staying One Step Ahead.
There is no such thing as a truly original idea. Crazy, we know, but hear us out. The greatest minds throughout history from Sir Isaac Newton to Charles Darwin to Steve Jobs have all admitted to "borrowing" ideas that weren't their own and building upon them. Einstein himself once said "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources". David Murray, our Director of Innovation and author of Borrowing Brilliance, The Six Steps to Business Innovation By Building on the Ideas of Others has built an ideation process that demystifies this seeming contradiction. In short, it just plain works and it's something we offer to all our clients during our discovery and planning sessions. On the house, of course.
Define the problem you're trying to solve. Sounds simple, but how you define a problem determines how you solve it. Through observation you can identify many problems and sort them from high-level to low-level. Try to get to root causes.
Borrow ideas from places with a similar problem. To see how others solve that problem, look to competitors, other industries, and to the arts, entertainment and science.
Connect and combine these borrowed ideas. Use an existing idea to structure a new idea by creating a metaphor, then amplify it and discard it when it no longer works.
Allow the combinations to incubate into a solution. Pause, sleep on it and put it away. Sometimes the most effective way to think is to not think at all.
Identify the solution's strengths and weaknesses. Judgment is the result of viewpoint. Intuition the result of judgment. Use positive and negative judgment, which leads to creative intuition—an idea that reflects the positives, not the negatives.
Eliminate the weak points; enhance the strong ones. Adjust the idea through trial and error, creating self-organization. Then return to the first five steps to adjust and re-judge it all. The order is different for every idea, and the creative process creates itself.
"It's about changing somebody's way of thinking from following preconceived ideas to making changes based on actual facts and information. Then partnering with them and showing them the return they'll get on their investment."
John DeLuca Social Media Coordinator