Mixed up makes better: Promotional thinking

The principles that enable creative thinking apply to all sorts of scenarios. We’ve defined five areas that we work in, all benefiting from creative thinking but leading to slightly different outcomes. 

Promotional thinking is needed when you have something you need us to notice. It could be your business, a new product or service, or an important message you need us to understand.

When you’re close to or in love with what you want to promote, it’s almost impossible to understand why we don’t all love it as much as you.

In order to promote something to the rest of us you need to get to the essence of why we would want to pay attention. Your love for what you want to tell us about is meaningless to us, you need to tell us why we’ll love it.

So how do you make this about us and not about you?

What is important to you is not important to us

Yep. If you’ve read any of our other articles you’ll know this is our most treasured of chestnuts. For us, it’s the absolute core of effective communication.

Imagine you’re a bit thirsty, actually you’re feeling a bit hungry too. But you had breakfast not long ago and you’re on your way to meet a chum for lunch. And you’re running late.

Looking around you see lots of stalls all promoting healthy sustainable food that offer a good source of protein. Recyclable packaging. Some even detail the supply chain so you know exactly where its come from. But it’s unclear what you actually get!

You’re standing in the middle of a lot of noise. And it all sounds the same.

Then you see a lively satsuma with big wobbly eyes waving at you. You don’t see a person in a vibrant costume. You’ve gone full Sylvester, eye-balling a rotisserie Tweety. There’s an actual piece of fruit waving at you! It’s brandishing a sign that simply says

‘Juicy fruits – snacks and smoothies – grab and go!’

There isn’t really a choice is there? The giant dancing fruit has made it easy for you. It’s telling you something that’s important to you. Not the owner of the smoothy stand.

The one thing

You need to put yourself in the position of who you want to speak to. This is where you need to summon your powers of empathy and understanding. Remember, the majority of us won’t know what you know. We won’t want to know. We don’t need to know.

Ask yourself a question, did you know everything you know about what you want to promote when you got interested? And then, if someone had tried to tell you it all in one go, how likely would you be to stick around ’til the end?

There will be one thing about what you want to promote that will be important to us. A simple truth.

It could be the thing that sparked your passion in the first place, before you know what you know now. It could be a benefit you’re so familiar with you no longer see it as special. It could be looking at what you want to promote from a different point of view.

All creative thinking relies on being free from restraints. The knowledge we hold can get in our way. It can be hard to put it to one side.

There’s lots of things you can do to help yourself think creatively. Talking to others. Being inspired. Freeing your subconscious. We explain those techniques in our article about new thinking.

And if you’re struggling, we’d be happy to talk to about promotional thinking, for free. And then, if we think we can help you and you like the cut of our jib, we’d take you on a creative journey that won’t fail to get you noticed, listened to, and understood.

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