Marketing teams can become echo chambers. To generate unique content, actively invite people from other departments and diverse demographics (e.g., a Gen Z employee) into your ideation sessions. They provide fresh perspectives that marketers often miss, leading to more resonant content.
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Involve people from outside the marketing team and across different demographics (e.g., Gen Z) in the content ideation process. Their diverse perspectives and awareness of different trends can surface novel ideas that marketing-focused teams might otherwise overlook.
Instead of ad-hoc brainstorming, implement a structured weekly meeting to review an ideation backlog. Explicitly separate ideas into "relevancy-based" (e.g., Super Bowl) and "evergreen" categories. This ensures you capitalize on timely trends while consistently building a bank of long-lasting content.
Establish a formal weekly meeting to vet all incoming content ideas from a shared repository. Critically, categorize ideas as either time-sensitive (e.g., a Super Bowl reaction) or evergreen. This ensures you capitalize on timely events while building a bank of content that can be written ahead of schedule.
Relying on second-hand information like surveys is not enough to stay innovative. Cvent's Head of Events realized that to bring the latest trends to her own events, she had to stop just producing and start actively attending others'. This first-hand experience is critical for genuine innovation and escaping a creative echo chamber.
The common practice of hiring for "culture fit" creates homogenous teams that stifle creativity and produce the same results. To innovate, actively recruit people who challenge the status quo and think differently. A "culture mismatch" introduces the friction necessary for breakthrough ideas.
Strict adherence to brand cohesion often stifles creativity and results in subjective boardroom debates. Brands achieve more by focusing on creating relevant, timely content that resonates with their audience, even if it occasionally breaks established stylistic guidelines.
Instead of traditional strategy, Duolingo's team applies principles from improvisational comedy. Core tenets like 'yes, and' (building on ideas) and 'commit to the bit' (going all-in on a concept) create an environment that encourages bold, reactive, and consistently creative content without internal blockers.
The primary benefit of internal marketing isn't just self-promotion; it's making the marketing team a visible and approachable destination for ideas from across the company. The best campaign concepts often originate from unexpected sources like SDRs or engineers who, because of internal hype, know who to share their insights with.
Instead of developing a strategy alone and presenting it as a finished product (the 'cave' method), foster co-creation in a disarming, collaborative environment (the 'campfire'). This makes the resulting document a mechanism for alignment, ensuring stakeholders feel ownership and are motivated to implement the plan.
