Immersion tricks you can use for better branding
 
First things first. We’re not into tarot cards, horoscopes, or transcendental meditation. We’re into hard work.
 
So why the “hypnosis” title of this post?
 
Hang on, we’ll get to that in a minute.
 
You see, while we’re into hard work, we couldn’t possibly be any bigger proponents of the “work smarter, not harder” mantra. (Oops, should we say “mantra” after we just dissed TM?) So we’ll try anything once; and if it works, we’ll stick with it. If it works well, we’ll recommend it. Just consider how many times we’ve suggested that you buy a cheap diver’s slate and keep it in the shower to capture unalloyed creative concentration.
 
So there was a technique we’d played around with and refined years ago for really unstopping the juices—and it wasn’t until many years later that we discovered a description of a very similar technique, under the heading of—you guessed it—“self-hypnosis.”
 
Who’da thunk it?
 
What’s the challenge?
 
Before you jump ahead and discover just how to swing that pocket-watch pendulum before your eyes (spoiler alert: we’re kidding), think about when such a technique might be helpful to you in your line of work.
 
Here are some hints to lubricate the process: You might turn to self-hypnosis (or what we’d simply called “total immersion,” or “getting into the zone,” or “going into the black hole”) when you need to get the most creativity possible out of yourself in a non-group setting. When you need to climb outside of your own prejudices and predilections. When you need to climb inside someone else, and really capture the world through their eyes, ears, and mindset.
 
Moving from the touchy-feely to the concrete: You can use this technique for developing a branding voice. For creating and drafting customer brand personas. It’s especially helpful for writing narrative concept descriptions of proposed products or services, which would be shown to prospective users as part of market research. It’s also useful for storyboards for said concepts, as well as more common assignments such as digital banner-ad copy, radio and TV spots, and jingle lyrics.
 
Come to think of it, this is a real Swiss Army knife. How could you not have it in your kit?
 
What’s the technique?
 
What we’ll describe here are guidelines. Tweak them to suit your needs, situation, and personality—and by all means contact us with any good builds! Here, then, are the key steps to unlocking creativity you might not have known you possessed:

• Clear your slate. To get yourself “into the zone,” you simply can’t have anything else distracting you. And this is where your mileage/tolerance may vary. If you’ve got little nagging to-do’s on your plate, do them. If they don’t nag at you/you’re able to forget about stuff like that, this step will go faster for you.

• Clear the cobwebs. Ticking off those last-minute to-do’s might rob you of essential energy. Heck, if you didn’t get a good night’s sleep, you may lack the total energy you’ll need. In yet another case of a technique we’d stumbled on yet others had already known/improved upon, you might want to test out what’s known as the “coffee nap.” We’d always tried a little power nap, followed by some caffeine, to get the juices flowing. Counterintuitively, some research suggests that flipping the order—that is, consuming the caffeine first, and then taking a quick (i.e., 15- to 20-miute) nap before the caffeine actually kicks in—is even more effective.

• Clear your mind. If it wasn’t obvious already, you want to do this in the Distraction-Free Zone. Don’t just disregard your emails as they arrive; shut off your email client entirely. You can turn it back on when you’re done. Imagine you’re going to the movies. What do you do? You silence your phone. You get comfortable. You settle down in the dark and get ready to immerse yourself in an exciting new world. Same thing here. Use headphones, white noise, ocean recordings, heck you could try aromatherapy candles if you think they’ll help.

• Ignore your keyboard. This is where you really start to disconnect yourself, quite literally, from your quotidian environment. The obvious way to do this is to use a voice recorder to take down what you’re about to say. But if you’re a genuine and fast touch typist—that is, you can really type without looking at the keys or thinking about them—you can type. Just tune yourself away from typos, capitalization, spelling, anything that would hinder your speed or distract you.

• Place yourself someplace else. Now that you’ve gotten yourself to the threshold of this wonderful place, it’s time to take your shoes off and step inside. And here, you can simply ask yourself some very basic—and surprisingly concrete—questions that pertain directly to the assignment at hand. “Who do I want to be? What is this person’s day like? Then, turning the “them” into “I,” ask yourself: How am I feeling? What do I want? What makes me happy? What pisses me off? What frustrates me? What grabs my attention? Why would I care about this product, service, or offer? What would make me interested in it? As the answers begin to bubble up, capture them via recording or keyboard.

• Go for volume. Take your time. Close your eyes. Massage your temples. Stretch. Ask the questions again. Think about your responses. Keep going. Generate as much material as you can. Don’t pre-judge. Just keep going. Get as much as you can. The whole process, done right, is not only productive but incredibly draining. You might work for an hour or two, and get a few pages of incredibly good notes, only to discover, when you’re done and you flick the lights on, that you accomplished all of that in just 20 minutes.

• Give yourself a break. Who’d have known that these fairly basic techniques qualify as “self-hypnosis”? (Not us!) But apparently it’s the same thing, or at least pretty close. Regardless, it requires prep and energy and can be both time-consuming and draining. If you do it right, take a break. You deserve it for a job well done.

• Get help. Some people will read these tips and then strain at the leash to try them out. That’s great. Others will read this and conclude, “Not for me.” That’s great, too. Because no one said you have to do this yourself. This is just one of the arcane techniques we employ to create great work on your behalf. Contact us and let us help you with that next creative challenge.

​Are inertia or emotion impeding your judgment?
 
This is not a topic that people like to discuss. Indeed, it’s one we often choose to avoid. But that doesn’t make it unavoidable. To the contrary: The longer you ignore a conversation like this, the worse the situation will be when you ultimately confront it. Don’t let it fester—or metastasize. Take a deep breath, take a look at the situation dispassionately, and then take action.
 
We can carve this discussion up into three topics—by internal team members, vendors, and then, most uncomfortably, clients—so let’s do so:
 
1. Cutting ties internally. This one is similar to advice we learned by reading former admiral James Stavridis, who said that the best ship handling comes from being able to avoid situations which would require great ship handling in the first place. It’s not wise to “take a shot” when hiring. Do your due diligence. Let both parties acclimate. Set expectations properly. Doing so will help you avoid deft “ship handling.”
 
Still, you want to make every reasonable effort to help someone succeed before turning to that last unappetizing option. But here’s a tip: Make it clear when you’re actively trying to save someone’s job.
 
Years ago, I (yes, first person here) had to fire a woman who worked for me. She was really nice, but she made tons of big, costly, and sometimes downright negligent mistakes, and I tried, over and over, to help her advance. But I couldn’t, and couldn’t defend her performance to my superiors any longer, either. So one Friday at the end of the day, I called her into my office and asked her to shut the door—which was ominous enough. Feeling sick to my stomach, I pasted on the most un-sick expression I could muster, and asked her, “Do you know why I’ve asked you into my office?”
 
Without so much as blinking, she replied, “You’re going to fire me, aren’t you?”
 
We both heaved a huge sigh of relief. She’d secretly wanted out, and it turned out the strain was killing us both. But we both agreed that at least there was no mystery, no shock, no unfairness in the moment. She’d known she was on thin ice. She’d known I was trying to save her. She knew her opportunities to improve were finite. So she knew she would get fired.
 
We parted on great terms.
 
2. Letting go of vendors. If your vendor is a small or one-person shop, many of the lessons from above apply. But you should (and probably do) have backup vendors anyway, in the case of multiple-bid situations, or even if Vendor B is there to cover when Vendor A is unavailable.
 
But if the vendor is bigger, the dynamic changes. The best tip here is to not burn bridges. Even if that vendor really did you a disservice on that latest project, you never know when new management might step in, or when that one bad apple gets tossed out. Conversely, you also never know when that vendor’s one superstar gets snatched up by another vendor—but you’ll probably find out via a phone call, email, or LinkedIn.
 
Still, it’s not fun to fire a vendor, and it can be avoided by setting and sticking to well-defined and realistic expectations at every phase of engagement. If they can’t perform under those guidelines, then they’re not helping you. And if you can’t perform under those guidelines… well, that’s another (and huge) issue entirely.
 
3. Cutting clients. We used the word “dispassionate” at the beginning of this article, and here’s where it really comes into play. If you’re passionate about your work, you’re likely passionate about your clients. So why would you ever sever that relationship? Why would you ever amputate the hand that feeds you?
 
Look at it this way: Would you ever quit a job?
 
Of course you would. You’ve surely advised friends and colleagues faced with that decision. Letting go of a client isn’t too different.
 
But back to “dispassionate.” We’ve had clients that have driven us crazy, but were still great clients. You need to step back, after the deadline is met/the work is turned in, and ask yourself, “Was that worth it?” Were those demands truly unreasonable? Or did they bring out your best? Did they force you to raise your game? If they were truly unreasonable, did the client “buy you a beer” afterward, i.e., pat you on the back and say, “That was brutal, but thanks, we couldn’t have done it without you”? A little atonement goes a long way in our book.
 
Note that this has nothing to do with money. If you under-priced a project, do a better job next time. That’s your fault, not the client’s. If you simply can’t turn a profit working for a given client, then it’s not helping your business, and the relationship—the business relationship—is unsustainable.
 
But clients are people. We have some former clients we keep in touch with, because we love their company. So in that way, the relationship is profitable after all.