Page 110 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

Creativity Is a Matter of Degree 101

The Lobotomy Files

Show, Don't Tell

We were looking for a good promotional handle to introduce a new
customer service idea for a major client, a supermarket chain down South.
It was a play/babysitting area where children could be left off while their
parents, or other adult chaperone, shopped. The final idea was to use
"eye-level signage" to attract kids and show parents how sensitive we were
to their little darlings. The idea was developed using 180° Thinking, where
we asked ourselves, "What's the worst way you would ever want to
promote something to children?" The answers: You'd never want to hurt
them in any way, maim them, poke the little bastards' eyes out.
Well, those less-than-pleasant thoughts led to "eye-level signage," cute
little signs at the entrance and around the store that stood three feet high
and pointed the way to the kiddie play area.*
John Zimmerman
President, o2ideas
Lobotomized 1995
* A moral to John Zimmerman's story is that you don't
always need to know where your ideas come from.

180° Thinking isn’t so much a place to take your finished thinking
as it is a place to begin your exploration of new ideas.

When your thinking takes you from soft to hard, “hard” is a new
place to start your creative process. Could the bed be hard for your
legs, but soft for your body and head? Might the bed be adjustable in
its firmness, like my car seat? How about a bed that gets increasingly
firmer in the moments before waking, a sort of gradual alarm clock that
rouses you progressively instead of a screeching buzzer?
Is that final idea really 180° from how beds are currently manufac-
tured? Well, no. But I arrived at it by starting in the opposite direction
of conventional beds. As you can see, 180° can easily be the fresh,
uncrowded territory where few thinkers tread. Might I have come up

Timeline of a great idea (continued)

Timeline of a lousy idea (continued)
"Wasn't yesterday bonus day? Hmm."