What Frogs And Soap Can Do For Your Business!
Ideas, ideas, ideas - the lifeblood of any business. Stay in one
position too long and you are dead! Today's market place
requires constant change, new angles, different products, fresh
presentations, original advertising slogans. In short it
requires business creativity. It requires creativity in
advertising. But how do you get them?
You can spend thousands of dollars paying the pros to deliver
slick advertising slogans. You can pay web site designer
generous fees for original designs. But how many small business
owners have that kind of budget? The alternative is to use an
extremely valuable piece of apparatus which right now is as
close to you as close can be. What? Your brain!
The human brain is a constant source of amazement to scientists.
Each of the 10 billion neurons has a possibility of making
connections to the number of 1 with 28 zeros after it. So the
total number of connections which can be made through
electro-chemical processes is pretty well limitless. Regular
thought patterns form channels in the mind, much like a path
formed through frequent pedestrian traffic across a field. This
has benefits. We don't have to deliberate about every minor
decision every day. However, there is a danger! If our thinking
falls into ruts when considering important areas of our lives
and business, our creativity is stifled.
The good news is this: You do not have to be a genius to come up
with creative ideas, break out of the rut and start thinking
"outside the box". You just need to kick start your brain by
providing outside stimuli to get it to think in ways it hasn't
before. This can be accomplished by associating totally
unrelated subjects together and observing what reactions come
from the fusion!
This method, applied to our business can be a fertile source of
ideas. Let's do a little exercise to illustrate. Supposing you
need fresh ideas, words, phrases, for an advertising campaign.
Choose any word at random. For the exercise we will use the word
FROG. Even better, get a picture of one. Now start writing
furiously on a clear sheet of paper anything and everything that
comes into your mind to do with frogs.
Here goes:
green, slimy, jump, legs, leap, croak, tad poles, metamorphosis,
reeds, water, bull, tree, wide-mouth, eyes, smell, slippery,
cold, kermit, spawn, eggs, jelly.
Take one of those words and explore further if you wish:
Legs - long, jointed, tasty, delicacy, spring, fold.
Mind Mapping is an excellent tool for this kind of exercise.
Review the mind mapping handbook here: (Book review:
http://www.vitalstop.com/br-mindmap.htm)
Now you look at your advertising subject. Are you selling
software? Then start making some connections:
Leap frog your business with ------- Jump ahead of the
competition with ------------- Blow your competition out of the
water with ----- Spring load your business using
----------------- STOP business slipping through your fingers
with this!
Just keep on cranking out phrases until you have a heap. Then?
Boil them all down to the best ten, best five. Then start
testing them until you find the winner! OK, so most of them will
bomb! But then again, one, and you only need one, could just
skyrocket! Often it happens without any logical explanation.
Sometimes you come up with a real slick idea which gets nowhere.
Other times a seemingly mediocre slogan takes off! Can anyone
explain that? No. So testing is essential to success.
Let's take another direction and apply the same idea to web site
design. Do you want to change the look of your site? Do you have
reasonable computer skills so you can save yourself a large fee
and at the same time produce a professional looking site? Good.
But what theme to use? How can you be different?
Take another word at random, SOAP, or again a picture if you
have one from a glossy magazine. Let's start listing every word
we can think of to do with soap:
Flakes, scent, pink, white, marble, skin, bubbles, soft, round,
square, gentle, perfume, liquid, toilet, bathroom, sink, bottle,
creamy, model, block, water, wash, towel, bar.
Now, do any of those words give you ideas for texture, color,
shape? For an interesting navigation bar, could you incorporate
some different shapes based on bars of soap?
The idea of bubbles has much potential. Links in bubbles,
different size bubbles according to importance of the link.
Could an attractive picture of a model help present a feature of
the site? Could a liquid dispenser bottle be used in a graphic
in some way?
After thinking carefully on these lines you could come up with a
very original, slick, attractive design for a web site or
whatever project you are working on.
So back to our title - What Frogs and Soap Can Do For Your
Business! No, these are not the ramblings of a crank! These
ideas are used by big companies who have millions of dollars set
aside for advertising. Check out for yourself a book full of
resources on business creativity and creativity in advertising.
- Jump Start Your Brain (Book review:
http://www.vitalstop.com/br-jumpstart.htm)
Why not mimic the big boys and do a little creative thinking
yourself? Sit down with a sheet of paper and turn on that
amazing thinking apparatus between the ears - your brain!
You will be amazed at the effect on your business!