Get Serious About Being Silly

We're creatures of habit. We have daily routines. We like it when the barista at Starbucks has already started on our usual order when we reach the counter. Yet our tendency to get comfortable with the familiar can have a negative impact on the way we market our products and services. In a post at his blog, Drew McLellan offers a few tips to shake you out of an uninspired, rote approach to marketing:

Find a new perspective. Consider your product from the mindset of a 6-year-old, a librarian or a truck driver. "By putting yourself in many different people's shoes, you can begin to see the situation differently," McLellan says.

State an assumption about your product or approach. Then question it. This generally leads to another question. And another. Just keep asking, "Why?" When you run out of answers, start the process again with another assumption.

Take a break. "One of the best ways to inspire some new thinking is to be in a new place," says McLellan. "Go to a park and take a walk. Go play at a toy store. Visit a museum. Play a kind of music you would normally never listen to. Stimulate your senses."

The Po!nt: Writes McLellan in the comments section of his post, "Sometimes you have to start out silly or in a place you'd never think would yield a usable idea. As you know ... those ideas pop up from all kinds of strange places!"

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