NORTHERN PLANNER

There's rigour, hard decisions and lots of hard work required when thinking about strategy but, ultimately, good ideas come from feeling, daydreaming, watching, scribbling, abandoning and retrieving.

It's never completely linear, there are many logical progressions with lots of lateral intuitive jumps and more retracing of steps than most of us like to admit to as well. I guess you could say that ideas are like organisms rather than mechanisms. They grow at their own unique pace and have their own independent free will. 

Of course, this is no bloody help when you have to get a creative brief in, or a presentation deadline. You really don't need someone telling you to actively not think about the problem so it 'emerges'. You have to do your utmost to coax things out.

I really like John Steel's method of keeping a board of post it notes, keeping re-arranging them and looking for connections. I also like mind mapping. Here's another approach which seems pretty quick and generates stuff that's a little more unexpected.

We're all in-built to love stories, so much of how we communicate and socialise is done through stories. What is popular culture if it is not stories. Even a video game is story, you are simply enabled to be part of it. What is a brand if it is not a slowly evolving story?

So try and create the germ of a dramatic story -a series of actions by which your protagonist (the brand, your consumer or even the product/service) brings about changes in their circumstance, lives, nature or the lives of others. Here are six, quick, killer questions that should help:

1. Where? What's the world the story will happen in? Dove's happen's within the beauty industry.

2. When? Choose the historical moment- what's the relationship between past, present and future?

3. Who? What's the nature of the characters? Who's your protagonist? Who's the enemy? On who's side is the protagonist on?

4. What events have shaped their lives and decisions? What events will?

5. Why? What are the characters motivations? This will help us predict what might happen next and how they might respond to different events and company.

6. How does all this feel? What's the genre? Soap opera? Comedy? What's the visual feel? What's the music like? Is it all filmed at night?

I especially find looking at the events our characters are likely to face helpful. It helps crystallize objectives and uncover the context for what where we want to affect. For example, will the event (s) be:

Ceremony

Celebration

Reunion

Chase or pursuit

Recruitment

Seduction

Investigation

A game

Discovery

Holiday

Quest

Argument/reconciliation

Battle

Might help, might not. Have a go if your'e stuck in a rut. It's very useful if you're looking for something to span audiences and media, rather than traditional, reductive advertising.