Ideation: The secret sauce for creative PR

No more lame and unproductive brainstorming sessions

Sometimes, it’s difficult to come up with great ideas. Other times, the ideas we come up with are just subpar and unimpressive. A lack of quality ideas is one of the biggest challenges of corporate America.

If only there were a way to recharge our minds and enhance the quality of ideas necessary for our work and clients.

Thankfully, we have perfected a process for successful ideation. This post discusses what ideation is, its benefits, as well as its role in creative public relations.

Audio: Listen to this article.

What is ideation?

Ideation is a process involving the production of ideas and solutions through sessions that include various techniques. As a formula that makes the most of expansive thinking, participants unite in a welcoming, dedicated, and judgment-free atmosphere to tackle a particular problem.

Ideation emphasizes access to both the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind. The amazing human mind’s alpha state is super helpful when creativity is required. 

Consequently, ideation prioritizes relaxation, playfulness, new habits, curiosity, suspending judgment, and other elements that facilitate creativity. 

Thanks to unfettered freedom, which is the soul of ideation, ideation allows your team to come up with novel perspectives for solutions. Have you heard the quote “think outside the box?” That’s ideation in a nutshell.

Some ideation techniques include:

• Brainstorming
• Storyboarding 
• Brain dumping
• Mindmapping
• Sketching
• Provocation
• Analogies    

The benefits of ideation

• Ideation helps you take bold and innovative strides
• It helps you make more informed and consumer-centric decisions
• Ideation boosts the variety and balance of your team’s ideas and creates fresh team dynamics as it gives everyone a voice
• Ideation increases the number of solutions your team comes up with
• It further helps question existing premises and challenges our current state of mind
• Ideation takes a step away from creativity killers such as the daily corporate struggle, lack of time to think, etc.

The place of ideation in creative public relations

Ideation is a crucial element of proper PR. Admittedly, it can be a challenge to put both sides of your brain to work, but the relevance of ideation in public relations lies in the fact that it challenges the current trends and preconceived notions of both the PR pros and clients.

Being saddled with the responsibility of boosting visibility and revenue for clients and showcasing their brand stories, ethics, and value via different assets, PR pros won’t go far without ideation. This is because they are compelled to understand the existing mindsets/notions and how well they work for clients. Then, they have to come up with what would work best. 

Ideation allows PR teams to dive into an ocean of ideas, push boundaries, and explore all possibilities.   

The outcome? Seasoned public relations campaigns that beat expectations.

Ideation is indeed the secret sauce for creative public relations because it involves the following:

• A passionate questioning of the status quo
• Innovative thinking behind every task and strategy
• Identifying different kinds of assets, particularly visual assets, that sufficiently support the campaign
• Conveying the brand’s message and story in a way that strikes a note with the target audience

With an intense focus on consumer insights, ideation ensures that every PR campaign’s assets are relevant and trigger the necessary emotions to prompt the needed reactions.

Ideation is a must if you want a PR campaign that takes a step out of the ordinary. Listen to this episode on the On Top of PR podcast with Duncan Wardle, the former head of innovation and creativity at Disney, to find out more about how you can keep your team’s creativity alive.       

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