Friday, August 21, 2009

White Board Experiment

I have huge white boards all over my office - and today I decided to put them to good use. I read the below and now am trying to "draw out" a brainstrom idea to solve a huge problem in under 28 minutes! My hypothesis is that I can creatively solve problems faster using colors and a time limit - it is a significant combination of endorphines and mental visual focus. I'll let you know how it works out and in the meantime check out this site- good stuff!

HELPFUL HINT OF THE DAY!
Define your problem or issue as a creative challenge. This is extremely important. A badly designed challenge could lead to lots of ideas which fail to solve your problem. A well designed creative challenge generates the best ideas to solve your problem. Creative challenges typically start with: "In what ways might we...?" or "How could we...?" Your creative challenge should be concise, to the point and exclude any information other than the challenge itself. For example: "In what ways might we improve product X?" or "How could we encourage more local people to join our club?" Click here to read Dr. Arthur Van Gundy's The care and framing of strategic innovation challenges (PDF document: 537kb)

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Dog Disasters to Dating Dynamite!



Meet Indie and Pino, my Boxer and Bulldog. Indie was my "perfect child" for over 2 years when I decided to get her a sister. Enter Pino. After doing zero research I fell in love with her coffee stained face and she came home with me. Little did I know that as she grew to 75 pounds and ate everything in my house she would also turn my perfect little angle Indie into an accomplice. Things were bad so I called the local Dog Whisperer, trained by Ceasar himself. She would fix everything I was convinced. In the first hour she had identified the problem - me! I am a terrible pack leader! And as she began to tell me all the things I was doing wrong I began to feel like I was getting advise on how to improve my relationships: "don't give away affection for free", "demand respect and set boundaries", "never walk the dog in heels". FAST FORWARD> I am now working on developing an online subscription service that will allow people to learn how to Eliminate Dog Disasters and it will double as a How To Improve Your Love Life, and triple as How To Finally Get Control Over Your Problem Child. Using online videos and various offline materials we are creating different ways to serve up the same psychology for training pack animals and making it applicable to achieving success in your personal relationships too! This is a perfect example of 'when life gives you a lemon-make lemonade'. My doggie disasters lead to a creative spark that just may be.... As this develops I'll keep you posted but for now visit www.yourdogandyou.com

WWCS Goes Mobile!

A year ago I launched WhatWouldCharlieSay.com. It was a very well recieved website that was started to help generate creative thinking, marketing ideas and advertising solutions. It was a great start but it had one major flaw! I- the author- can't stand still and I certainly don't have time to maintain another website- it's too stationary, too cumbersome, too, too, too, NOT accesible through my IPhone! And then it hit me... Blogging has upstaged the now "passe" static websites. It's less restrictive and it can achieve the same desired result as any static website- or dare I say newsletter.

One might say I am late to the Internet Revolution Party. Or am I?
I am an active member of the Direct Response Industry, where some of the most innovative marketing and advertising in the world is generated. Yet I am continuosly amazed at how anti-web the majority of us really are... and let's not use the fuzzy phrase "social media". Most of us pretend to be hip to the power of communicating to the masses effectively through online engagement but in reality how many of us actually engage in it daily? How many of us do much more that Facebook or Twitter as a social escape (no critism as I do it too)? With active participation you can use these interavctions too become more successful.

Like exercise, the more we engage in creative thought processes, the more refined and defined will our creative muscle become. This Blog will update you on how I am develop projects using all kinds of experimental thought processes, issues that I think affect our abilities to grow successfully, as well as fun, creative and inspriational nuggets of nonesense that will get the juices flowing. You can use this content as fuel for your own creative thinking and endeavors. I think Creativity is like sending positive vibes out in the universe- the more you send out the more the universe sends back to you. I can use all I can get, expecially in the marketing and advertising game you're only as good as your last great idea. How do we generate enough ideas to create GREAT ideas more rapidly- new opportunities quicker- and long term success? Let's blog about it and find out- follow me!