Brainstorm Gone Wrong
You turned up, the ideas didn’t
You’re two and a half Pomodoro sessions into a ninety minute creative brainstorm, but the ideas aren’t flowing, and there’s nothing to get the team going.
Debbie keeps circling back to the idea she had in the cab, which sounds good but doesn’t fit the positioning.
Brian thought of a great idea in the first five minutes, but every idea he’s had since, is just a ‘this like that’ riff on the original, and he knows it.
Between the three of you, you’ve exhausted all available synonyms sans-internet. And if you merge another two words together, like you’re branding the next streaming platform, you might have to call it a PubDay™.
To keep busy (run out the clock), you underline words that no longer have relevance…
Fiona, the art director who’s supposed to be in the meeting but is stuck on a call, pings you a photo. It’s another biro sketch drawn on the back of a Pret A Manger baguette label*.
The ‘sketch’ looks like an isometric grid had a baby with a Bento trend, which grew up to be an annual report. You put your phone down. Not that you’re picky…You just pitched a similar idea to a crypto wallet last week, and they haven’t got back yet.
*Tuna.
Your vision blurs, and you confuse your Simon Sinek circles with the front cover of The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, which you finished on the train this morning. Led by the spirit, you randomly open your sketchbook and point to a page, hoping to pull a George Harrison and find your version of ‘Gently Weeps’. But your finger lands on the word ‘Artwork’ which, even transcendentally speaking, is jumping the gun.
Brian is now drawing stop frame animations on the blue Post-Its that never get used, because no one can read them. Debbie leans over and asks Brian, ‘What have you got for us?’ in that tone. Brian launches into his sixth incarnation of his original idea. This time it’s all about ‘texture’. You write it on the board to keep up morale.
For the final ten minutes, Debbie suggests another word association game, but you’ve played all the usual suspects. And the only word you associate with this meeting, ends with Tuesday.
In a last bid to inject some creative juice, you begin rearranging Post-Its on the wall, fishing for accidents. Midway through trying to post-rationalise a shadow with the colour purple, you catch a glimpse of your reflection in the butterfly wing of a 2018 Transform magazine award and sit down.
The only other good idea you've had, is scribbled on the brief you left in the meeting. Debbie pipes up with an idea identical to a direct competitor rebrand that went live on a rival agency’s website two days ago, but you don’t say anything.
You decide then and there you’ll have to phone it in this time. The three of you sit in silence until your alarm goes off, signalling the end of the third session. The ringtone is the same as your morning alarm, and you shiver.
You ask Brian to work up the 1st, 3rd and 5th variation of the same idea and call time. ‘Pomodoro’ has given you a craving for Padella & Trullo Restaurants's lunch menu, so you slink off for a sulk and a bowl of complex carbohydrates.
We’ve all been there when it’s all squeeze, no juice. (I know I have).
It’s also easy to get overwhelmed with productivity techniques and mental models in an attempt to prime your creative mind. Not to mention the doom scroll of brain hacks, cheat codes, playbooks and pay-walled listicles for strategic thinking.
But everyone gets very quiet in the room when we show up and the ideas don’t. Feel like you’ve done something wrong? You haven’t.
In my experience, productivity tools look and sound like work, but quite often feel like a job. A job that looks, sounds and feels like stress. (Cortisol is not conducive to creativity).
There will always be times when an eagerly anticipated brainstorm results in a drawn-out dome drizzle. For these moments, when your creative juice looks more like dried pith, there’s no fancy—or expensive—solution.
If the energy is there, but the ideas aren’t, rebook the meeting room and try again in the morning. You are not an imposter.
