Idea Shopping – A Gift for Retail Marketers

Delivering good shopper marketing ideas on demand can be draining. Finding just the right mix of strategic and creative is more epic quest than jaunty scavenger hunt.

Creativity is hard work. Finding new ways to showcase a retail brand and engage a shopper requires the ability to redefine and reshuffle, continuously dissecting and rebuilding points of view and points of connection. The job is to manipulate the images in your head, excavating, disassembling and linking them in a way that redefines (and refreshes) the shopping experience.

It just makes sense, then, to refill the creative well from time to time. It’s important to replenish the strategic source. The smart creative thinker takes full advantage of this imagination-jingling time of year when inspirational stimuli goes into blinking, blaring, pine-scented overdrive.

Holiday time is a gift to the idea maker in need of a recharge. It’s a creativity-feeding celebration of light and noise and unexpected strategic perspectives. Go out and feast your eyes, your ears and your imagination.

Where to look?  Some ideas, one for each of the 12 days of Christmas:

Store windows (large visions in miniature)

Decorated homes (because too much is sometimes just the right amount)

Kids’ art (where else would Santa ride a camel?)

Places of worship (soaring light, sacred and sublime)

In-store displays (what are the other guys doing?)

Holiday cards (who knew you could do that with glitter?)

Flashmob holiday videos (the power of community)

An empty park (a blanket of silence)

The holiday pageant (again with the glitter)

A blockbuster movie (bombastic and mind-blowing bigness)

The holiday table (pine cones meet Wedgwood)

Busy city street corner (stand still and drink it in)

Where else might you look?