Recently, I stumbled upon a very interesting article that talked about the growing concept of ‘Makerspaces’; as the definition goes, “A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a school, library or separate public/private facility for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to no tech tools.” Essentially it is a dedicated place where people come together to tinker, explore, create and invent something new with the help of a like-minded community. While this concept is gaining some traction in India, and as per news reports, there are estimated 26 makerspaces that have come up in India. Read more about it here: http://bit.ly/1QdVWJI
Coming to the business of Public Relations, creativity has become a critical priority for businesses to choose a consultancy. In fact, the industry is striving towards reinventing itself when it comes to creating quality and unique PR campaigns that are globally competitive. However, many of us still have so many questions about spurring creativity in our very own teams, some of the ideas are:
- Tinkering Time: Some of us would have read about start-ups allowing its employees dedicated day/time for tinkering. This is very important for communication consultants to break-away from the usual rigmarole of activities and spend some time thinking about unique ways of solving a client problem. Tinkering can be done in groups as well and it should be encouraged in a different environment to break the monotony.
- Platform for Presenting Ideas: Coming together in teams for brainstorming ideas and presenting them to get feedback is immensely beneficial. An interesting full-day workshop called ‘Manthan’(inspired from the Hindu mythology, sagar manthan, a process thought by gods and demons to churn out nectar from the ocean) is practiced by Adfactors PR B2B, Tech & Start-Up SBU wherein the team dedicates a day to present campaign ideas along with story themes that are used for the quarter plans. To add to this, individual team members presenting best ideas are also rewarded appropriately that helps to keep them motivated.
- Sources of Creative Inspiration: So what can be your inspiration to come up with unique and original ideas? To begin with start to draw analogies from what is happening in the environment, what are the issues impacting the social-economic environment. Then think it through, can your client as a corporate take a lead and help resolve the problem? To give you an example, consider the drought issue faced in Maharashtra, if your client has its plant/offices in the state, can it tie-up with an NGO and adopt one village? Such topical ideas that align with the client’s business objectives are always welcome. What else, read some of the award winning international case studies, cover stories of magazines, keep a tab on research reports by associations, Twitter Feeds of thought leaders or get inspired by videos from YouTube.
Please do share some of the interesting practices that you follow in your consultancy. Let’s work together on building ‘Creative Leadership’ high on the agenda for the PR industry and build client’s confidence.