I had a wild thought.
Wild concepts are our greatest and our worst moments.
It was again once I labored at a big nationwide fundraising company. I’d not too long ago made the transfer from copywriter to artistic director, which implies I had frontline position in new enterprise pitches.
And we have been pitching a doozy.
It was a big group. Extraordinarily giant and well-known. You’ve heard of them, I promise. It was the biggest group we’d ever pursued, by a protracted shot, a part of what we hoped could be a shift from the medium-size nonprofit market to the excessive finish of the market (in dimension). This was a giant deal for us.
And I had an thought.
We’d found that they have been dramatically over-spending their price range in a single space of donor acquisition. And it simply occurred that space was a specialty of their company. (Yeah, large shock, proper?)
So to make the purpose that you simply shouldn’t make selections primarily based on what you need to do, we determined to begin our pitch assembly with me speaking about how wonderful the e-book Walden by Henry David Thoreau is. I’d speak about it for a full 5 minutes, after which I’d hand out copies to everybody within the room.
Then one other member of our pitch crew would lastly problem me, saying that simply because I cherished this e-book doesn’t imply it’s an amazing selection for everybody… After which we’d pivot to our precise pitch, which was about how we’d have a data-driven strategy to determination making that will maximize their income, and so forth., and so forth.
Right here’s the believe-it-or-not half: We really did this.
And right here’s the much more believe-it-or-not half: We received the account!
Wanting again, I can’t fathom why my more-experienced colleagues let my thought really occur. I can also’t fathom the way it didn’t scuttle our pitch, which was stable with out the Walden bit. However we did it, and it labored (or at the least it didn’t shoot us down.)
Which tells us a number of issues about wild concepts:
- It’s good to have wild concepts. I’ve a sense my Walden thought did extra to assist us perceive and deal with the shopper’s problem than it did to steer them.
- Generally it’s good to truly strive them out. Higher in a testing scenario than a one-try, win-or-go-home one like this one!
- It’s laborious to inform a very good wild thought from a nasty one. All of them look good, at the least for some time.
- All the time attempt to have a number of wild concepts. They will result in your greatest work, even when they aren’t so nice themselves!
And for those who get the prospect, learn Walden. It actually is a superb e-book.
(This put up first appeared on April 12, 2019.)