I have two decades of experience creating and crafting brand positionings and strategies that have benefited numerous companies, both small and large, from established multinationals to startups. I use a straightforward approach (see my section on brand strategies) that starts with an understanding of the market, the company and the consumers and ends with a brand positioning and strategies that are relevant and motivating. Now I have a created a condensed version of the process in the form of a one-day workshop. Through a series of structured sessions during the course of the day together we will:

• Define your target audience.
• Create a positioning, a vision and a mission for your brand.
• Develop a series of actionable creative strategies to communicate your brand to the world.

In addition I will help you find ways to unleash the full potential of your brand. Using creativity tools developed for my book ‘The Business Playground’ we will identify:

• New markets and market segments to stretch your brand.
• New usage occasions for customers to use your brand.
• New venues for your brand.

Every workshop is a high-energy experience uniquely designed around your specific branding needs and can either be held at your offices or hosted offsite.  If you’re interested in hearing more, I’d love to talk about how a workshop might work for you so please email me at markjcsimmons@gmail.com.

Thanks!

Mark

The idea that collaborative thinking, or ‘Groupthink’, as the right way to solve problems creatively is misguided. According to author Susan Cain in the New York Times, it is often solitary thinking that leads to the biggest creative breakthroughs. She mentions Steve Wozniak who invented the first Apple computer and said in his memoir: “Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

When visual artist Yoi Kasama asked children to put sticky coloured dots on a white room in an Australian gallery space the result, called ‘The Obliteration Room’, perfectly illustrates the natural creativity of children.

Domino’s Pizza in the UK have created augmented reality (AR) billboards that let passerby order pizza through their smart phones. According to Creativity Online: “Consumers can scan the posters, placed over 6,000 sites and communicating a special ’555′ deal, with their smartphone, download a mobile ordering app and become a Facebook fan, all while standing at the bus-stop or walking down the street.”

We talk in the book how giving the unconscious mind a crack at a problem often helps with creative process. New research suggests what’s might be going on. The researchers found that compared to folks who focus all their energy on solving a problem (one problem they gave was what to do while waiting in a queue for the cash register), those given a distracting task to perform did not come up with better ideas. But, they were better at selecting the best ideas, maybe as a result of some “unconscious tagging process”. They conclude that “the unconscious mind plays a vital role in creative performance.” Suggestions on some distracting activities to do while solving problems creatively can be found in our book and in our iPad CREATIVITY app, available in the iPad app store.

David Owens of Vanderbilt University‘s Owen Graduate School of Management outlines what his research has shown him are the the most common hurdles for innovation that a company might encounter:

- Failures of innovation are failures of ideas, and to meet this challenge companies need to train people to use the tools and processes that help them “think differently” and enable them to become better at generating and recognizing good ideas.

- A company’s social climate will determine whether an innovation succeeds.

- The company or organization needs a strategy for innovation.

- Innovation fails when a firm competing among a group of rivals in an industry fails to produce something customers want.

- For an innovation to succeed, it has to be technologically feasible.

He says: ”By learning to analyze these constraints in advance, turning from retrospective analysis to proactive strategy development, you can dramatically improve your chances of innovation success.”

Walmart is using Big Data gleaned from social media to target consumers with highly relevant suggestions for products. Last year it bought a startup focused on social media, Kosmix, and formed WalmartLabs. It uses Kosmix’s vast knowledge base, called ‘Social Genome’  to capture information and relationships about entities such as people, events, topics, products, locations and organizations. In Information Week, Anand Rajaraman, SVP of Walmart Global eCommerce and Head of WalmartLabs, is quoted as saying: “There is an unprecedented amount of data about people, places, products, companies, brands, and pretty much anything we can think of. Companies that can mine this treasure trove of data and glean insights to gain a huge competitive advantage.” Walmart can track social media mentions on locations, people or products and use this intelligence to better tailor its product offerings. “The deeper the understanding we have about our customers and our products, the better we can connect with them. Our technology platform, which we call the Social Genome, tracks connections between people, products, brands and other relevant entities. We can use the Social Genome to make product recommendations to customers, whether they are in the store or shopping online,” explains Rajaraman.

Pop star Cee Lo Green will make about $20 million this year. His hit single “Forget You” (actually it’s not “Forget”, but another shorter word beginning with the same letter) became the 12th most downloaded track of all time. But his music sales represent only a small proportion of his earnings. The New York Times calculates “F*** You” earned him about $700,000. The other $19 million or so come from a variety of projects and deals.  Cee Lo‘s management company, Primary Wave Music, has come up with some very creative ways to make money for Cee Lo without relying on music sales. Not so long ago sales of recorded music were the mainstay of any musician‘s earnings as a hit single would lead to big album sales and plenty of cash, but now with the demise of the album artists like Cee Lo have had to look elsewhere. Primary Wave’s CEO Larry Mestel says album sales represent the smallest slice of the revenue pie. A stream of TV appearances, endorsement deals, TV commercials have traded on and built Cee Lo‘s brand. He’s been a judge on TV talent show “The Voice”, has his own shown on cable network Fuse, appeared on Saturday Night Live and been in TV commercials for 7-Up, Absolut Vodka and M&M’s. Next year he will have his own show, “Loberace“, in Las Vegas and will star in a Mark Burnett produced TV show in the UK called “Cee Lo Takes the UK.” What Primary Wave is doing for Cee Lo is the model for the future of the music industry, and is a good lesson in creativity and innovation for many other industries that are seeing their worlds changing through technology. Necessity breeds invention, and without invention we might find ourselves being forgotten.

Pop star Cee Lo Green will make about $20 million this year. His hit single “Forget You” (actually it’s not “Forget”, but another shorter word beginning with the same letter) became the 12th most downloaded track of all time. But his music sales represent only a small proportion of his earnings. The New York Times calculates “F*** You” earned him about $700,000. The other $19 million or so come from a variety of projects and deals.  Cee Lo’s management company, Primary Wave Music, has come up with some very creative ways to make money for Cee Lo without relying on music sales. Not so long ago sales of recorded music were the mainstay of any musician’s earnings as a hit single would lead to big album sales and plenty of cash, but now with the demise of the album artists like Cee Lo have had to look elsewhere. Primary Wave’s CEO Larry Mestel says album sales represent the smallest slice of the revenue pie. A stream of TV appearances, endorsement deals, TV commercials have traded on and built Cee Lo’s brand. He’s been a judge on TV talent show “The Voice”, has his own shown on cable network Fuse, appeared on Saturday Night Live and been in TV commercials for 7-Up, Absolut Vodka and M&M’s. Next year he will have his own show, “Loberace”, in Las Vegas and will star in a Mark Burnett produced TV show in the UK called “Cee Lo Takes the UK.” What Primary Wave is doing for Cee Lo is the model for the future of the music industry, and is a good lesson in creativity and innovation for many other industries that are seeing their worlds changing through technology. Necessity breeds invention, and without invention we might find ourselves being forgotten.

We have now released Creativity Lite in the iPad app store, a free version of our 5-star rated app to help unleash your creative mojo. Check out the link here.