That’s why, the best brainmonsoons I’ve hosted or been in, we don’t talk about the client. It’s easy to take an entirely different, almost metaphorical tact and talk about experience. Actually, that’s not true: it’s not easy, and the risk is that you don’t get anything. Still, it’s more fun.

Also, I like your points. I’d like to be invited to your monsoon.

Matt.

I love the idea of a BrianMonsoon and the various approaches to take a creative session to a different level. Often times I’ve found impromptu sessions in the Office Lounge or just turning around and talking to the people around you leads to new and solid concepts you hadn’t thought of before. Point is that these sessions don’t always have to occur in a conference room – you need to get out of those elements and allow people to be comfortable and not feel like the best ideas need to come out in a conference room with a wipe board.

“If you have staff members in a meeting for a clients project and they have prepared all of 5 minutes before the meeting, there’s something wrong.”

Of course we’d all like to believe that people have taken the time to prepare for a creative session, but the truth is, from my experience, that many people don’t prepare properly. I think you may have missed my point.

“… 10 in a meeting…”

I’ve been in creative sessions with all sorts of numbers, the exact number of 10 wasn’t my point, my point was to mix it up.

I work at a PR agency, we have about 8 TVs on throughout the office, and I don’t think that’s wildly unusual at a creative-focused agency. And yes, we often watch videos from YouTube, and go on Facebook, etc. throughout the day, that’s some of the many ways we keep up on consumer and popular culture.

Maybe I didn’t communicate this properly, I didn’t mean to suggest that you literally take your client through every bit of background material, but that you demonstrate your differentiation from other agencies. In my experience, clients are blown away when they understand the research you put against their project. Apologies if this didn’t come across right.

Certainly don’t want to suggest being unconventional for the sake of it, but my overriding point was to do things differently and extend the brainstorm concept beyond one, one-hour session.

If you have staff members in a meeting for a clients project and they have prepared all of 5 minutes before the meeting, there’s something wrong.

I agree with different size meetings, but 10 in a room for “brainmonsooning?” By the time you finish the intro it will be time to wind up the meeting.

I want to work in this place. TV on for days, gifts or inspirational toys on my desk, I get to watch videos on YouTube in the middle of my day!

I think if I showed my client 50 pages of notes, doodles and what have you, not to mention random writings from anonymous employees for their project, I’d be looking for work the next day. All a client wants is one great concept for their project and they don’t care how you got it. I would think the first thing a client would do when seeing everything but a great concept is wonder how many hours and what it cost him for diatribes that may not have anything whatsoever to do with the business objectives.

Sorry…did like some of your ideas…but some of these just sound like an attempt to be unconventional without delivering the goods. Great concepts for the project across multiple platforms and quantifying the potential results…that’s what a client wants to see.