A shower of fresh ideas

In today’s business environment, it would be quite impossible to find an employee that hasn’t participated in at least one “brainstorming session”. Brainstorming has become a generic term for getting a group of people together to throw around ideas.

The term was popularized by Alex Faickney Osborn in the 1953 book Applied Imagination. The underlying theory is to toss out as many ideas as possible, not worrying if they are crazy and then build on the ideas. However, according to an article in Harvard Business Review, research demonstrates that groups that use this framework actually come up with fewer ideas (and fewer good ideas) than people working individually.

March is Essential Tremor Awareness Month. Essential tremor, or ET for short, is the most common movement disorder affecting an estimated 10 million Americans. The marketing team at Insightec develops a digital campaign every year to raise awareness for this little-known condition. We had done internal brainstorming but wanted fresh ideas. Exactly for that reason, we reached out to an external partner. This year we worked with the digital team at G&S Business Communications to develop a digital awareness campaign.

ET is a very visual condition. A person living with ET shakes when performing daily activities, such as drinking a glass of water. G&S held an initial brainstorm session with their internal teams in New York, Raleigh and Chicago. They took a unique approach giving each team a single image, for example a woman in a bathing suit taking a shower in glitter.  These picture purposely had absolutely nothing to do with focused ultrasound or essential tremor.

What comes to your mind when you see the image of a woman showering in glitter? How would you connect that image to ET? Is there a connection?