Coming up with an angle for your marketing or advertising can be a bit tricky. Like solving a great mystery when all the clues are jumbled together. But when you’ve been a copywriter for as long as I have, you learn a trick or two.
And I’m going to share one of those tricks with you.
Although it’s not really a trick. It’s a system for coming up with creative advertising ideas.
A blank page can be intimidating so the first step is … to start!
STEP 1: Write down what you know
To get your pen moving, start by writing down everything you know about your product or service on the left-hand side of your page. Don’t worry about “the big idea” just yet just write down:
- Your product observations from every angle
- Your customers’ frustrations
- The feelings evoked when your product is used
STEP 2: Play word association
The next step is to fill up the right-hand side of your page with the associations that pop into your head. Don’t censor yourself here. Just let words pop into your head and write them down.
They could be words associated with the shape or smell or texture of your product, or phrases that pop up around your service delivery. Remember that you aren’t trying to be descriptive you’re writing down associations.
STEP 3: Join some dots. Any dots.
Now comes the part when you turn your idea seedlings into a bouquet of awesome (which is the collective marketing noun for new ideas).
Grab one word or phrase from the left-hand side of your page and one from the right-hand side. Then repeat.
Keep an open mind during this process and make your match-ups unrelated. Your goal here is to come up with a long list of creative concepts. They won’t all be good but really great advertising often links totally unrelated concepts in an imaginative way and this could just be the start of a great idea. And now you have a whole page of creative concepts and ideas that you can play with!!
See… it’s not so hard!
Belinda
One Response
Great blog Belinda..
I am divya from India. I don’t know if it’s a hidden goal within me..when anything sums up about idea,I mull over it and I get brilliant to me Ideas.. But I am uncertain of approach towards certain product and towards execution of it.. I am an employee n I am not from agency background.. But I want to tell this to company where the product may/can get motivated with my idea..
This is my first message in search of my goal🙂
Thank you..