Homog'd Selling

I still enjoy running the occasional workshop on idea generation over video calls.

It baffles me how making the most of this kind of activity remains so neglected.

I guess I'm frustratingly ingrained with the disappointment of missed opportunity. Given the number of organisations I've encountered that are happy to stay stumbling around such space during the last five years .

How many times have you come across someone who's genuinely thought for instance, 'we need to see if we can do our meetings differently, and have better ones'?

Same goes for brainstorming. Which is in part why I felt vindicated to read broadsheet tech columnist Andrew Orlowski cite digital marketing creative, Nick Roope, as follows;

“When starting a brainstorm, ask the LLMs to give you a list of suggestions of what creative teams are most likely to suggest. At which point the team knows what not to do: it’s a list of the obvious.”

For I have done this very same thing.

A couple o' years back I highlighted the disparity betwixt the experienced mind and the infinite random phrase generator. Around that time, a legion of ad copywriting gurus - admittedly with skin in the game - wailed, though as I found correctly, of the utter uselessness of the instant bot output.

[21 April 2023 Get More]

Yet it got me thinking in a way like the mould of James Dyson's wrong thinking.

If you've a clearer view across what is not right at the outset, then start from that.

The vibe I used back then was along the lines of, 'think y'can do better than AI?'

In which everyone relished in trying to prove that they could.

Then there's all manner of ways, including those long since formalised, by which you can build on such blocks.

The example steer above shows that regardless whether you've 'expert' opinion in the room, and in similar vein to how students essays that've been bot-written all read the same, you can avoid the homogenised dross your competitors will slavishly follow.

Not only are alternatives increasingly riddled with 'slop thinking', but by definition you will rise way above that type of 'bland thinking' to truly stand apart, higher and better.

What works for digital media plans does for brainstorming does for selling ideas too. Get building.