I was reading the other day in an article on how children are the most creative and can come up with totally new solutions to a problem. Infact there have been tests conducted where different groups of people with different qualifications ( MBA's, Psyschologists etc ) are grouped with children and a problem or a puzzle is posed to them. Surprisingly the answers given by the children were found to be creative and also fresh. Is it because they have not been exposed to the loud theories, the complex business models, the jargons, the acronyms we pride ourselves with ?
That set me thinking and I asked myself. Does that provide us ( advertising agencies, consultancies, corporates ) an opportunity to work with children and look at bringing in some fresh and innovative thinking. Its not necessary that we restrict ourselves to children's products but look at some gripping problem the brand or the organisation faces. Long ago Candico had a team of chidren on board to work on product development.I am not sure wheter they still have. But that made for a good start. I am looking at taking it to the next level. The tough part is to present the problem I guess will lie in breaking the problem down to total simplicity and in a language the children will understand. Probably breaking it down into a simple story or an analogy to get it through them and allow the fresh solutions to emerge
Any takers ?......................
2 comments:
Anbu,
Thats interesting. those innocent kids indeed at times come up with solutions which we cannot think about.
Okay heres a problem, tell me how can getting kids on board solve it or any solution that you can think about. A music company wants to promote its education CD/Software to the parents but they want to talk to the kids (5 - 7 yrs). As you know kids dont like books, how can we make brand envangelist out of those kids?
It's interesting indeed to introduce kids into the creative and problem-solving process. But I guess the real problem here is of managing kids - apart from the adults, of course - day in and day out. And I suspect that the value kids bring recedes over time. (That's just my opinion, though.)
Which is why the preferred approach - emulating the innocence of kids - is the more popular one. Of course, it's never going to be as good as having a kid think for you - but it pretty much marries the best of both worlds. As Saurabh points out in the previous post, a good planner should combine the best abilities of a child and an adult.
The secondary and distinct point you are making is of the need to simplifyy a problem down to the level of kids or non-experts - but for our own benefit. Saurabh had posted along similar lines at his blog recently.
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