10 Steps to Running an Awesome Creative Meeting

There are a million ways to run a creative meeting. It's important, however, to find one that works for you and repeat it frequently. This is one way we like to run creative meetings.

The Steps

1. Set the Rules

   • It's important to be clear about the process up front
   • No cell phones/computers, they will distract and hurt you creative process
   • Identify the steps that are creative versus evaluative

2. Have everyone offer up ideas

   • 'No bad ideas'
   • No evaluating at this point
   • Pure creative spew
   • I'll have a future post with more ideas on how to brainstorm, ideate, brandstorm, and beerstorm ;)

3. Write the ideas down

   • It's important to keep a record

4. Start over with new ideas

   • Set all the previous ideas aside and start anew with #2

5. The next day, organize the ideas

   • If you were writing on a white board or shared paper, copy everything to a digital location

6. Evaluate each idea

   • how it can speak to your target
   • how the medium will benefit/hurt the concept
   • what are the negatives?

7. Rank the Ideas

   • This can help give perspective to the kinds of concepts you have

8. If you have a stand out idea, go to #9

   • If there is not a clear leader, take the top three, set them aside, and go back to #4

9. Evaluate the idea

   • Really dig in: pros, cons, how it effects other marketing efforts.
   • Is it good at this stage of the campaign? Should it be used to start a campaign, support it in the middle, end it?
   • Is there a better way to do this? Cost? Scope?

10. Implement

    • Now you have to execute. Good luck.

Couple things to remember

1. Not every idea you decide on will work perfectly! After you've implemented it you have to assess and figure out: what worked, what didn't, how to improve.
2. Don't get hung up if you don't feel inspired. The creative process is a practiced exercise so that you can come up with great ideas regularly and without the need for inspiration.
3. Creative breaks are necessary. Do something that you don't have to be creative at. Go for a hike, ride a bike, play a video game, watch a movie. Live life a little so you have more experience to draw creative from! We'll talk more about this in a later post on ideation.

How do you run creative meetings? Is it similar? What works for you?