The Best Ideas are Often Outside our Focus…

Strange how the best ideas live where you’re not looking. So how do we creatives and marketers benefit from focus and structure? I’ve found that focus is step 1 to great creative, and step 2 is looking outside of those crosshairs. Here are ideas for spotting where the great ideas like to linger.

You’d be amazed how both the micro (focus) and the macro (wide-angle view) bring variety and creativity to an anything-goes brainstorming session. The big picture ideas appear at the borders of your idea cloud—alongside the bizarre, goofy, cliché, and downright dorky ideas. Focus defines those borders, and, de facto, the sweet spots along the borders. At the same time, too much time ruminating on the big picture creates fun yet mostly irrelevant ideas.

This balance is crucial in our line of work. We need focus to keep us off thin ice and to push through the challenges and see a project to completion. But without leaving space for creativity, we risk missing out on those unexpected game-changing ideas. Here are some tools to help you spot those great ideas lurking in the wings:

3. Scheduled Brainstorming Sessions: Set aside regular time for brainstorming. Whether it’s a solo session or with a team, these unstructured moments can lead to the breakthroughs you’re seeking.

4. Environment Switching (my favorite): If you’re feeling stuck, change your environment. Whether it’s moving to a different room, taking a walk, or even working from a café, a change in scenery can spark fresh ideas. Truthfully, my best ideas come to me when I’m miles away from my laptop with my labradoodle Pepper. Usually a lunch break does the trick.

“Alongside focus, step back to find those great ideas that hang out in the fringes.“

5. Journaling: Keep a journal (a.k.a. Notes app) to jot down any ideas, no matter how small or seemingly unrelated. Revisiting these notes later can often lead to surprising insights and new connections.

Tie it All Together

By balancing structured focus with intentional space for creativity, you’ll be better equipped to produce work that not only meets expectations but exceeds them. I’m curious what your go-to creative strategy looks like.

We’re always looking for ways to implement interactivity and movement into things that we design. A good example of this is the latest edition of our promotional notepad. Who doesn’t love a flipbook? A simple pad of paper becomes memorable when people engage with it by flipping through its pages.

Quick question: When you interact with a flipbook, do you flip the pages upward towards your face or do you flip them downward away from you? You’d be surprised at how passionate some can be on this topic.

In this case, our flipbook depicts an illustration that animates to show the ‘T’ in Targa’s logo coming together. This idea is so simple and it has been around for ages. Honestly, who doesn’t remember drawing their own stick figures in their textbook, encyclopedia or pad of sticky notes just to try their own hand at basic animation? This nostalgic factor can be the glue in your sticky marketing.

Of course ‘sticky marketing’ is just a phrase until you can assign some actual marketing numbers to it. An A/B test done by VistaCreate demonstrated the objective, real life number results below:

“As you can see, our animated ad attracted 1.5x more clicks than the static image. This made our cost per click drop 50%. And despite our animated ad reaching notably less users – 18 thousand for video vs 25 thousand for the static ad, the number of clicks on our advertised link was more than double for the animated ad – 325 clicks vs 145 clicks.”

There are many different levels of motion that can be incorporated into marketing. From full fledged video and animations to small gif files. Targa’s signature signature images are an example of really simple graphics that catch the eye with movement.

If there is something I like as much as a motion graphic, it’s a nice list. Here’s 10 reasons to consider putting your next idea into motion.

Unless you truly disconnect from all things digital, you’re likely to see evidence, or mention, of some form of AI on a daily basis. This technology is being explored from every aspect of business from customer service to sales. AI is here to stay. How are you feeling about it? Here we’ll explore why it is making its way into our way of doing business and how using it effectively benefits businesses and their customers.

Artificial Intelligence is…

“…making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were behaving”

John McCarthy – Computer Scientest who coined the term Artifiial Intelligence in 1955.

The idea of AI has been around for over a half century, but given the fact that we all run around with tiny computers in our pockets and purses, its effects today are far more reaching than conversations amongst computer scientists. Within the topic are other subsets, like Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), that range in complexity and capability. For all intents and purposes, we’ll lump it all under the banner of AI as we explore how it can have an influence on our efficiency, creativity and education.

…Is on my list.

For whatever reason, I love a good list. A nice long list of 100 items warms my heart. I pride myself in making lists quickly for things both trivial and noteworthy. From my 100 favorite movies to 100 cherished memories, I’ve searched the corridors of my brain to be proficient and thorough on a variety of random topics. 

Diversified thinking

Not only will AI unlock opportunities in efficiency, but for a visual person like myself, it can be a lot of fun to use in the image generation space. Any crazy combination you can think of can be spat out of an AI platform lickety split. This proves to be a fantastic way to brainstorm for yourself, or others.

AI’s source

In a previous blog post, we teased the idea of reverse searching images we created through AI engines to find where the inspiration stemmed from. Unfortunately, there were no decipherable exact matches or direct ties to artists or images that could clearly explain all the computer’s decisions.

Here is a screenshot of something AI kicked over to us on the left in the black border. To the right you see images that popped up when we did a reverse image search. While there are some similar characteristics in cartoonish cows, we don’t see one particular style or color palette modeled entirely. Subsequent searches yielded similar results.

Harnessing AI for the overall good

Stick to it!

My team and I can help. We love the inherent challenges of following a moving target, and we can help you anticipate where your customers will be next.

BONUS: How to be sticky with event marketing

Do you have some pretty cool events planned in 2024? Good for you! Here’s my checklist on how to get your marketing investments to pay off:

I talk often with our clients about connecting with non-attendees just as much as those in attendance. Regardless how many of your target customers show up and find you, you still have a vital database of non-attendees to connect and resonate with. What are your  “We missed you” tactics?

Being sticky with non-attendees: Your event campaign needs a component to let non-attendees know what they’ve missed out on. Offer them a slice of an attendee perk, such as a soon-to-expire video-captured demo. You’ll create high perceived value when you become their “event recon.” And therein lies the power of building relationships.

In summary, plan your event tools with non-attendees in mind. Interactive in-person experiences are the icing on the cake. Think through virtual versions of those in-person activities. They often require minimal resources when they’re part of your initial event planning. Reach out if you’d like ideas on this.