Running a company on market research is like driving while looking in the rearview mirror.
Anita Roddick, founder of Body Shop
Creating a brand identity for a business, product, service, etc. can be a chore. It can also be a great deal of fun. Whatever you come up with will probably have to last a while, so it’s easy to agonise over your choices – and that’s if you’ve even started on the process.
Here are some deceptively simple ideas to get your brain working on multiple levels.
- Sum it up with just three adjectives.
- Sum it up in one sentence.
- If it were a person, who would it be like the most?
- Choose a font with the same first letter as your company, your own first name, or perhaps your pet. The names and looks of the fonts may inspire you.
- Take the name and run it through a thesaurus – see how similar words stimulate you.
- Find the dictionary definition of the component words.
- Ask who would use it.
- How is it used?
- Where is it used?
- When is it used?
- If it were an animal, what would it be?
- What do people expect to see?
- Can you do the opposite?
- Can you use humour?
- Enter it in a search engine and go to page eight. What shows up that far down the listing?
- If it could talk, what accent would it have?
- What colour is it?
- What uses could you find for it that weren’t originally intended?
- Is it Poundland, Tesco, M&S, or Harrods?
Try creating a brand-new product for an existing company, or create a completely new company. Whether you actually need to do this for your own business or not, it can be a very stimulating exercise.
For more information:
This creativity tip comes from Build Your Own Idea Factory: 68 ways to boost your creativity and get inspired by David Norrington
https://geni.us/Idea-Factory
