Branding Strategy Insider

Of Ideation Sessions, Presentations, Toys & Learning

Beyond achieving productivity or leaving a favorable impression in a creative pitch, sales meeting or ideation session, a key goal is that the ideas and information shared is retained. We know you must 'know your audience', but have you considered their learning styles?

Rita and Ken Dunn of St. Johns University have conducted 30 years of research on the learning styles of children and adults. They are able to show that students excel when allowed to learn in circumstances that support their preferred learning style.   

They have identified five categories with reliable and valid instrumentation and a strong research base:

1. Environmental: bright versus dim light; sound present or absent; warm versus cool temperature; formal versus informal design.

2. Emotional: high versus low structure; low versus high level of persistence, motivation; and responsibility versus nonconformity.

3. Sociological: preference for learning alone; in pairs; with adults, peers, team, or varied.

4. Physiological: visual, tactual, or kinesthetic perceptual strengths; high versus low mobility; and time of day preferences.

5. Psychological: global versus analytic; impulsive versus reflective; cerebral dominance.

The Dunn’s identified three types of preferred information intake:

Exploring Ideation and Creative Problem Solving

The mostly highly admired brands are usually unique, original, fresh, and leading edge. In fact, many have invented or reinvented entire categories. To be that kind of a brand, an organization must be highly innovative. Element K CEO Bruce Barnes likes to talk about the “Virtuous Circle of Investment/Innovation.” It is very simple:

•Investing in customer-relevant product/service innovation leads to increased revenues
•Increased revenues enable continued product/service innovation

Innovative brands with innovative products, services, and marketing approaches typically make extensive use of creative problem solving and ideation (idea generation) techniques.

Creative problem solving usually requires two distinct phases: divergent thinking (ideation) and convergent thinking (idea analysis and evaluation). The purpose of ideation is to generate as many ideas as possible in as condensed a timeframe as possible.

Brainstorming is the most popular ideation technique. Brainstorming requires the following components to be successful: