When you’re marketing a business, creativity, fresh ideas and innovation can contribute greatly to the success of your efforts. But creativity isn’t easily controlled, and often fresh ideas are hard to find. When you’re trying to come up with effective marketing campaigns, advertisements or slogans, brainstorming can help you get the creative juices flowing.
Collects Different Viewpoints
In any business, when a single person is responsible for generating all of your ideas, those ideas are likely to become stale or repetitive at some point. During a brainstorming session, however, you can collect ideas from a number of others. Those ideas may not be brilliant or even viable, but as you brainstorm together your ideas may evolve into something that is fresh and effective. Since your coworkers or associates likely have varying backgrounds, interests and motivations, they may help you generate ideas that no single individual could have fleshed out on her own.
Gets You Out of Your Head
When you need to be creative, your own brain can become your worst enemy. That’s because creative thoughts may get jumbled and confused in your head, preventing you from thinking them through clearly. You also may come up with a vague idea, but find yourself unable to get the idea to take definite shape. Brainstorming requires you to pull the jumbled ideas from your head and get them out – either audibly or on paper. Seeing or discussing these ideas can help you give them detail and shape, increasing the likelihood of finding something innovative.
Encourages Critical Thinking
One major advantage of brainstorming is that it requires you to think critically to solve a certain problem or create something innovative. The more you brainstorm, the better you become at encountering a problem and thinking about it critically. This means taking a topic or situation and looking at it in a logical and clear way, free from personal bias. Critical thinking may require you to break a topic or problem down into smaller parts. For instance, if you need to form a campaign around a new product, you’ll need to consider various pieces of the campaign, like product packaging,
Brainstorming Builds Teams
When you practice brainstorming as a group, you take team ownership of a campaign, product or event. This means that one person isn’t left feeling like he is carrying the workload for the entire company, and also cultivates a feeling of team ownership. Groups that practice brainstorming together may also learn how to work together better. Your brainstorming sessions will enable you to see certain talents or expertise in your coworkers of which you weren’t aware, which can be a great advantage when you need help in the future.