KLM - performance art creates buzz (and smiles)

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I absolutely love guerilla marketing as a way to generate brand buzz and launch new products. Here is a new favourite from KLM to launch their new "Economy Comfort Zone" on intercontinental flights. The event takes place in Manchester Airport using the Dutch magician Ramana. Advertising that generates awareness and smiles is a powerful duo, combined with the viral effect this ad will generate, it's a very effective campaign indeed.

The Best Ideas - breakfast with Seth Godin

Seth Godin requires no introduction. I happily subscribe to his words of wisdom and creative inspiration that are sent every day, rain, snow or sun. You can too. This little pearl was delivered into my inbox this morning. I read it while munching on my Raisin Bran with bananas and a sipping a cup of (Starbucks French Roast) coffee. I thought I would share it you.

"Do you often find ideas that change everything in a windowless conference room, with bottled water on the side table and a circle of critics and skeptics wearing suits looking at you as the clock ticks down to the 60 minutes allocated for this meeting?

If not, then why do you keep looking for them there?

The best ideas come out of the corner of our eye, the edge of our consciousness, in a flash. They are the result of misdirection and random collisions, not a grinding corporate onslaught. And yet we waste billions of dollars in time looking for them where they're not.

A practical tip: buy a big box of real wooden blocks. Write a key factor/asset/strategy on each block in big letters. Play with the blocks. Build concrete things out of non-concrete concepts. Uninvite the devil's advocate, since the devil doesn't need one, he's doing fine.

Have fun. Why not? It works".

Isn't that the greatest idea! I wonder if this would work in a group setting. Often I find that these collisions and new ideas come from getting a group of people together from different functions and backgrounds to look at an issue or opportunity.

Feel free to share your most effective techniques on generating good ideas.

Beyond Carrots and Sticks

What motivates creative problem solving and innovation in the workplace? Enjoy this TED talk featuring social scientist Dan Pink. Dan Pink argues the case that present day thinking around managerial approaches and incentive based performance actually stifle performance, especially when more out-of-the-box approaches are needed to tackle a problem. He cites research from universities such as MIT, Carnegie Mellon, LSE to name a few to support this fact.

So what drives performance? Intrinsic motivators. People want to feel that what they do is part of something larger than themselves. They want to feel engaged, not by being told what to do but by being self-directed. Carrots and sticks don’t work in the new economy. Dan Pink posits that too many companies are still focusing on old world thinking about driving results and can learn from 21st century companies like Google, IDEO and Atlassian where new approaches like devoting specific time to non-work projects are driving results and employee satisfaction. At Google in particular, at least half of the innovative new products, including Gmail, have been created during this think and play-time.

What does the new operating system look like? It satisfies these human desires:

• Autonomy – the urge to direct our own lives

• Mastery – the desire to get better and better at something we have a passion for

• Purpose – the yearning to do something of value in the service of something bigger than ourselves

Enjoy!