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A few years ago, we were very fortunate to knock down the old, decaying place that we had purchased 30 years ago and build a new home. We employed a young architect and gave her some basic guidelines around our budget, number of rooms, types of materials, etc.
She then started playing around with a few concepts and constantly fed back to us her initial ideas, to which we gave her specific feedback.
As the process moved forward, the conversations became more interesting; for example, ‘Where would you like to entertain?’ and ‘What do you want to feel in your office?’ (I was working from home.)
This two-way, iterative process between what we would love and what we could afford felt engaging, productive and eventually ended up in a home that we both love.
The magic is in the creative tension. The many small and big interactions between:
What is?
Switch:
What if?
The paradox is that the more information we received (for example, council restrictions on height) meant that we had to be more creative in our thinking. The more we knew, the more we could imagine. The architect wasn’t choosing between creativity and constraints. She was constantly moving between them. Marketers must do the same thing.
The challenge for content marketing professionals is knowing when and how to switch between creativity and optimisation.
For example, you can start in what I call ‘Box Mode’ (i.e. structured thinking) and identify the size of the opportunity, the competition, consumer trends and pain points.
Then you ‘switch’ to what I call ‘Ball Mode’ (i.e. exploratory, imaginative) as you develop some initial ideas and solutions to excite the customer and move them to action.
But here for me is where the fun begins.
After a deep focus on both modes of thinking, you then move to a new phase where you are constantly switching between the two. I believe the old days of keeping these two modes separate are long gone. In a time-poor, unpredictable environment, you need to be constantly switching between the two modes.
For example, search data shows that customers increasingly want advice about reducing energy costs (Box Mode).
Instead of publishing another ’10 ways to save energy’ article, your team switches to Ball Mode: what if we created a game that parents could play with their kids about saving energy? Perhaps students and teachers could compete in an energy-saving challenge for their school? You test it, track participation, shares, search traffic and enquiries (in Box Mode). Then switch again: what could transform a successful experiment into a movement?
The key point is this: data informs creative questions. You can start with one goal in place, but real-time results call for real-time thinking, creativity and decision-making.
Switching between the two modes (i.e. Box and Ball) is an ongoing dynamic process. When you are stuck, pause and consider switching to another mode, even if only for a few minutes. There is no right or wrong time to switch. For example, ‘We seem to be stuck, let’s switch to Box Mode and see what the data suggests’ or ‘We have been looking at the numbers for ages, what does everyone’s intuition say?’
Thinking in modes, not types of people, means that everyone in your team can play, contribute and learn. In Box Mode, prompt AI to analyse the data. What is it saying? Then switch to Ball Mode and ask, what is missing? What’s a scary question? Or one that we have not asked before?
This creative questioning flows from optimising what you have, yet transforming it into something magical.
Dr Ken Hudson is the author of Switch Thinking
