Why Your Brain Battles With New Ideas.
So, you need some ideas to launch your new product. Your marketing team are too busy so it’s down to you. Where do you start?
How do you generate new propositions? Maybe you need some new ideas for your search campaign or you’re looking to run a split-test on your landing pages.
It’s ok if you’re a seasoned agency bod who used to working this way but if you’re not, it pays to understand a little about how your creative brain works before you get stuck into the ideas.
More specifically, how your brain conspires against creative thinking and what you can do about it.
Before we start, small caveat; this isn’t a scientific explanation and I’m no doctor or professional clinician. I’ve gathered these facts from experience, talking and researching the subject. I’ve also borrowed heavily from the amazing chaps at ?WhatIf! More about them in a moment.
Your brain likes — no, LOVES familiarity.
From an evolutionary point of view, familiar ‘things’ are more comfortable to us. Why? Well, the fact that we actually survived the exposure to them means our brains recognise them and like them. In fact, they like them so much so that they tag and store them as ‘safe’ in a nice neat folder in our brain.
As we begin to experience similar ‘things’, our brains build up that folder in our brains. Soon as we experience something similar to the ‘thing’, it gets filed in that very folder. Neat.
Familiarity and similarity is not only the brain’s self-preservation method at work, it also makes for a highly efficient filing system. This method allows the brain to store huge amounts of data like sights, sounds, smells, feelings and tastes.
The brain has around roughly 100 billion neurons and neuroscientist reckon that the storage is the equivalent of 10–100 terabytes. All of this data can be retrieved in a millisecond. That’s all amazing but it’s not without its faults…
The brain’s natural filing system has a weakness.
So, we’ve seen that the brain is an amazing machine. Capable of storing multiple stimuli and recalling it in an instant blah, blah, blah. This makes it super-efficient for repeatable and mundane tasks…
But what about that brand new proposition? Or new campaign idea? Something that you’ve never thought of or experienced before. That’s when the brain works against creative thinking…
Because no matter how hard you think of something completely random — your brain does as it’s always done. It ‘trips’ into a familiar pattern and searches for similarities ‘on file’. If it can’t find anything, it lets you know by making you feel uncomfortable.
Remember that uncomfortable feeling?
What about the first time you rode a bike or took your first driving lesson? Your brain wouldn’t have had any experience to call on — no folders, no files, zilch. Your brain treats this lack of experience as a threat and reacts accordingly.
Maybe you wobbled then fell-off your bike or mistook the clutch for the brake. Whatever happened, it probably felt clumsy and difficult. This is the brain in classic self-preservation mode.
Remember: if it doesn’t know it or hasn’t seen it before, it won’t like it.
The fact is your brain is built to resist new ways of thinking. Anything that challenges what is already ‘on file’ is treated with suspicion.
Don’t worry! The fact we get this uncomfortable feeling when we explore news ideas is a sign that our brains are working normally. The trick is to be aware of it when it happens.
Creative people are skilled in recognising this uncomfortable feeling. They use tricks and hacks to bypass those brains patterns. Some of the most talented creative folk I know do lots of ‘odd’ things and put themselves in situations that challenge them. To the outsider this is seen as ‘crazy’ creative folly. Actually, this is simply them challenging their brains with new experiences.
A really simple exercise to demonstrate how your brain works
Ever played the word association game with a friend? Now try the word disassociation game. Try and think of something completely different not the same. It’s much harder isn’t it? But this is what we need to do to generate new ideas. We have to cheat the brain.
The secret: override the brain
There are many ways we can do this to our brains. One of my favourites is a technique borrowed from the aforementioned guys at ?WhatIf! It’s called the 4Rs. The 4Rs are; Re-expression, Random links, Related worlds and Revolution.
These are really simple exercises that you use to halt the brain from performing it’s usual automated task.
In December 2017, I worked with first year Visual Communication BA (Hons) students at AUB. We used the 4Rs to come up with propositions for a brief they were working on.
Here’s some slides that we went through with the students to explain the 4Rs along with some examples…
1. Re-expression — saying it or seeing the challenge differently.
2. Random links — find a genuinely random thing or object and make a connection with the brief.
3. Related worlds — borrow an idea or thinking from a completely different sector or, err.. world!
4. Revolution — turn it on it’s head, subvert and invert the norms.
That uncomfortable feeling is your friend.
The point of the 4Rs is to get the brain thinking differently about the subject you’re working on. The trick to doing this is working quickly. Scribbling ideas down on paper is best. Use words, stick man drawings, whatever it takes to get the ideas down at speed. Don’t over-think it. Just go with it.
If it all feels strange, just hang-in there!
This is a good sign that your brain isn’t liking what you’re doing. Hesitate too much and you give your brain a chance to go back to familiar ground.
Work hot, edit cold.
Once you’ve come up with some ideas, pin them up, step back and then start sorting through them. You can group them or mash them together. Cuts bits of them out to make another. Or start over again. Talk through them with colleagues and be honest about what works.
One of the reasons why working on paper is so good is that you’re not too precious about them. They’re just pieces of paper so you can easily screw them up and re-draw them.
The 4Rs don’t always take you to the idea.
It might be that your ideas aren’t fully-formed — don’t worry, they may lead onto others. Some may not progress any further. On the surface, it might feel like a large chunk of them won’t serve any use at all but… the point is that they tripped your brain into thinking differently about your challenge. This is all valuable thinking, whatever the output.
The 4Rs is only one of many techniques you can use to help you generate propositions or ideas for your next campaign. It is a techniques that I’ve used and taught many times in my career. I hope it can help you too.
