Forget What You Know…

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we were to remember nothing.

-William James

This quote may come in handy when brainstorming new ideas. Certainly your experience is worth a great deal, but sometimes, when it comes to developing new, innovative ideas for promotions, product development, campaigns, or customer communication it helps to initially throw out “what you know.” Putting everything and anything on the table in a brainstorming session can be a great way to brainstorm new ideas.

Many times, we hear banks defending certain marketing tactics with the statement “this is how we have always done it.” Not a very compelling reason, is it? Customer and market perceptions are always changing, so even if you are considering to re-execute a past successful campaign, that doesn’t mean it will be successful when executing it in the future.

If you plan only to repeat successful promotions, you may be missing out on an idea that could be even more successful. Also, if you rule out all unsuccessful promotions, you may be ruling out a good idea that was poorly executed or a good idea that would have been more successful with different situational criteria.

In some scenarios, you can take your brainstorming a step further by removing resource restrictions. If money, supplies, people, and time weren’t limited, what would you do? The ideas you come up with might not be plausible, but they may cause you to uncover new ideas within your resource limits that can make a huge impact.

A healthy dose of “forgetting” is crucial for our ability to think big.

Happy brainstorming!

Jamie