Remember, the idea you go with can make or break your entire marketing campaign.
So be patient.
An approach you can use when looking for seeds of Big Marketing Ideas is to use the “Action Figure” Technique.
The Action Figure Technique
This is based on an interaction Mark Ford had years ago while flying home from a family vacation.
Seated next to him on the plane just so happened to be one of the original creators of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Being the curious fellow he is, Mark leaned over and asked the gentleman how they came up with such a popular idea.
“At the time,” the gentleman responded, “mutants, ninjas, and turtles were really popular.
And since we were targeting teenagers, we figured, let’s combine all of that into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That’s it.”
Pretty funny, right? And interesting, though.
The idea here is to look for the different topics and ideas getting a lot of attention in your marketplace right now, and see if you can combine them into a new and different story nobody else is telling.
Just, be aware: During this stage of “idea development,” you’re not writing any copy.
You’re not trying to craft a headline or any opening copy.
You’re simply developing the idea. Think of it as developing the idea for a movie script.
You only begin writing when you’ve first determined you have a great story to tell.
So, your aim is to get clarity on the idea itself, first.
The Story Nobody Else Is Telling Technique
Another technique is called the “story nobody else is telling” technique.
Basically, you try to fill in the blank. The blank story nobody else is telling in the marketplace right now.
So what is the gold investing story that nobody is talking about right now?
What is the Facebook Ads story that nobody’s told yet?
That’s going to be tough. There’s a lot of them, but that’s where the opportunity is.
For example, we might know marijuana investing seems to have a lot of appeal.
So what is the marijuana investment story nobody else is telling right now?
Think of all the things that are working right now and just figure out what hasn’t been told yet by competitors in the marketplace.
This doesn’t need to be the story no one has ever said in history or anything like that, but definitely what it means is that nobody in your industry is talking about it.
Like no one has put those two things together.
Magic Wand Technique
If you could wave a magic wand and grant your prospects anything: any transformation… any outcome… any result… any difference in their life, what would they ask for?
What would that magic result be?
And, here, in this context, don’t place any restrictions on your thinking.
During this exercise it’s not about what’s true or believable.
It’s just about what your audience would ask for if you could wave a magic wand and grant them anything related to their current situation and problem.
Once you’ve got the ideal outcome your prospects would ask for, then you can back it down until you have a promise that’s true and believable.
But start with the outcome they would request.
No matter how outrageous.
If you ever have any difficulty in coming up with BMI or find it hard to unleash your natural creativity, this TED talk from Tim Harford might be helpful.
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