Coming up with the ’big idea’ is often the hardest part of any creative process. It always seems like some people have the knack for it and others don’t, and while some people are naturally more creative, it’s possible for anyone to come up with creative ideas if you’re following the right creative process.

While it sounds like the thought of bringing processes into a creative task might limit the creativity involved, the process itself is designed to help you dig as deep as possible and explore areas of interest that you may not have considered without any prompts. 

Let’s look at how you can apply a creative process to your own idea generation.

Every good idea must start with a brief 

A good brief should start by outlining the objectives and KPIs you want the campaign to achieve. Do you want to increase organic traffic to your website? Do you want to increase clicks to a certain category page or drive sales to a certain product? Do you want to expand your backlink profile and gain links across new publications? It’s important to define these objectives, however broad or narrow they might be, before embarking on the creative journey. 

It’s important to know which key topics are relevant to your industry and which you are happy to comment on, too. Are there any emerging trends at the moment that you would like to establish yourself as a leading voice on?

The key audience you want to be targeting should also be mapped out, along with the target publications you want to gain coverage in. Knowing exactly who you want to target and where will help to steer creative direction and give you a much better idea of the types of ideas that will resonate. 

For example, if your target audience is Gen Z you’ll want to think about the kind of topics that motivate them – what data is out there to show what matters most to them? Where are they spending their money? What values do they mostly uphold? You’ll need to consider these questions and do your research before making the assumption that your idea will resonate with the intended audience.

If you have more time, try to share your brief with those who will be helping you to come up with ideas before the weekend to make the best use of a short timeframe, allowing people to subconsciously consume content over the weekend that may spark an idea or just to take the time to mull things over. 

Conduct independent research

Once your brief is ready and has been digested by everyone who will be contributing to the creative process, meet for an ideation session to dive deeper into the topics you’ve identified would like the campaign to reflect, the objectives you want it to achieve and to gain a better understanding of which will best align with the motivations of your target audience.

Always start by recapping the brief and answering any questions the team may have. When everyone is clear on what you are trying to achieve with the campaign, now is the time to begin formulating those big ideas and it all begins with research.

Set aside 30 minutes to 1 hour for focused, independent research into the different topics you wish to discuss. Remember, no idea is too big! It’s always best to think big and scale down later on.

Data is your best friend

While data doesn’t sound particularly ‘creative’ it’s a crucial part of the ideation process. Campaign ideas that perform well are always grounded in data about emerging trends, news stories, popularity and shocking statistics. The reason behind your idea needs to be justified and it needs to be relevant – data ensures that it is.

Finding the data doesn’t have to be difficult, there is plenty of third party data on the internet that can be harnessed and interpreted to form a unique idea. Always think “problem, solution” when coming up with new ideas.

Third party data can be anything from existing datasets and surveys to searching the latest news. 

Some great tools include: 

  • Perplexity: an AI tool for searching the latest news and data along with its sources
  • Buzzsumo: for finding trends in search
  • AlsoAsked and Answer The Public: for finding what queries users are searching for along with queries that are often asked alongside the original. This is great for finding long-tail keywords to rank for.

Spotting any gaps in the data that’s available online could be an opportunity to produce this data yourself – and just like that you have your first campaign idea.

Look at your competitors 

It’s important to look into what’s been done already and what campaigns are already out there. Perhaps there’s a follow-on from one of these campaigns or a different angle you can take regarding the same topic. 

While looking at your competitors’ campaigns may spark additional ideas, it can also show you what not to do. It’s important you come up with ideas that create differentiation between you and your competitors and help you win some attention.

How do you want your idea to be presented?

Once you have an idea in your mind and have gathered the appropriate data, think about how you want to present it – is it in a map form? An infographic, billboard, stunt, survey, 3D render? 

Certain campaign formats are proven to perform better than others, with microsites, maps, and interactive campaigns outperforming the rest, but it’s important to remember that you must choose the format that is most relevant to your objectives and audience.

Source: The Grapevine, Heroine 

Feedback and discussion is key

Possibly the most important stage, feedback and discussion is essential to the ideation process. 

Once you’ve all completed focused, independent research, it’s important to share your ideas with one another. We like to use Miro, a tool for brainstorming where each idea can be saved as a post-it, note-like icon, including all the data found to support the idea. This makes it easy to leave feedback on each other’s ideas so you remember which were the most liked all-round and can easily pull out the top ideas from the ideation session.

You must be not only sharing what you like and dislike about each idea, but discussing how your ideas can tie together and sharing thoughts for how to build upon each idea or scale it down to meet budgets.

The typical cycle of an idea is iterative and not linear; ideally, ideas should go through the iteration process as many times as possible, but this is only possible with infinite time and resources. It is key, however, that you are revising ideas at least twice. Initially during a feedback session, and again once the key ideas have been pulled together.

Get stuck in!

It’s easy to procrastinate when it comes to generating new ideas, but following a creative process can make the first step seem far less daunting and simplify the task in your mind. 

Take the first step and create your brief, use data and research to justify your ideas and spark new thoughts, align ideas with objectives and always brainstorm and feedback as a team, iterating ideas as many times as resources allow.

Need a hand in coming up with new ideas?

Our Digital PR team are experts in generating ideas and building compelling campaigns. Get in touch today.