Brainstormin Techniques

1. Apples to Apples

• Buy the card game

• Pick a product or service that you want to improve or expand capabilities for
    o Example: How can we diversify OptumizeMe?

• Each person in the group pulls from the stack of red noun cards. The red cards are made up of everyday things, places, and famous people.

• Share how the product or service could be altered to tailor to the card you drew
    o Example:
       Everyday things – How could product/service incorporate or use this everyday item
       Places – How could geographic restrictions change the offering
       Famous people (ex. The FBI, Microsoft, Darth Vader) – How would they use the
          product/service

2. Bucketing

• Identify a space you want to explore
    o Example: Health care billing, homelessness, cooking lessons

• Give a stack of post-its to each person in your group

• With a Sharpie, each person gets 10 minutes to write down as many ideas or problems for that space that they can think of in that time

• After 10 minutes, post all space ideas/problems on the same wall

• Once all post-its are on the wall, identify trends and sort the post-its into groups that tap into a common area
  o Example: For cooking lessons, having a live online class and having a live 4-person
     cook-off on Google+ between friends could fall under the same bucket

3. A Day in the Life

• Identify your core customer

• As a discovery method, find a way to observe the customer from when they wake up to when they go to bed. This will help you identify the customer touch points and pain points that provide opportunities
  o If you can't be there physically to write down notes or videotape your customer, provide your customer tools so they can record their daily happenings

• When completed, synthesize the information and debrief as a group to identify opportunities to improve your customer’s everyday life

4. Things We Hate

• Talk about things you sincerely do not like (product or services)
• Everyone pitches in to brainstorm solutions

Saturday Brand Thoughts

"You can't manage change, you can only be ahead of it." - Peter Drucker

I'm personally fond of brand behaviors and sustainability, both in terms of the environment and relationships. Whether its colleagues, employees, customers, fans, or wife, sustaining relationships takes work. And no matter your audience, nuturing that relationship comes through transformative communication and thinking ahead.

Here are a few thoughts on how to think differently about your brand and the space it holds in the mind of those you wish to sustain communication with:

• Be remindful of your values and true existense. Sometimes its not what's on the package, and hopefully its not. Starbucks is more about people than coffee. 
• You can lead someone to water, but you can't make them drink. Have you shown a house buyer twenty houses only to have them stay put? Cooked your husband a three course meal only to have him say, 'It tastes a little dry.'? As Winston Churchill said, "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." You will not get them to buy everytime, but that loss will turn into wins down the road that you cannot see today.
• Think about how you can do the campaign without advertising first. Think about your office being inside a railroad cab. Think different.
• A few brand names with a generic trademark that describe their category: Rollerblade, Kleenex, Band-Aid, Dry Ice, Lego, Xerox. The world is desperate for new categories in sustainability, what are they?
• Letters 'p' and 'b' are plosives, meaning they are followed by a burst of air when spoken. The biggest mistake a person or brand can make is to become content. What can you do to bring a burst of air to your brand or relationship?

• Everyday you're either building your brand or tearing it down. Today, a client hires an agency for their charisma, thoughts, and trust, not past work. That is because consumers buy belief batons, the product itself is not enough. Communication must account for the environment and the behavior it effects.
• Brands are about controlling perceptions. Expand around your core, don't leap frog. Brand confusion is detrimental.
• Never look reactionary. Be prepared for potential crisis and how you would communicate. Problems grow, spray the weeds fast.
• Are they a good match? I often see a guy with a girl out of his league. If two brands come together, the more powerful pulls the lower brand up, and vice versa. Be careful before dating as a favor.
• Don't date celebrities. Unprecitable and brand should not be seen in the same sentence. Have you heard of Tiger Woods?
• ENGAGEMENT! Ever heard, "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll remember. Engage me and I'll believe."? It's true, my wife forgets things I tell her. Tap into multiple learning modalities and the more succes you'll find. Prentend like you have to sell ice to someone in Antartica, make them believe.
• Branding is about taking something common and improving upon it in ways that make it more valuable and meaningful. Incremental can be instrumental.
• Internal first! Happy wife, happy life. Happy employees, happy customers.
• Be yourself. Be Brave.

I Get To...

How do you move the needle so instead of people saying, 'I have to go to the doctor,' they say, 'I get to go to the doctor'?

Similar to how we take for granted that at any time we have the privilege to drive a car down the street to the grocery store, we take for granted that we have the ability to drive to the nearest ER and get care.  American citizens are accustom to these everyday privileges and as a result use the language, 'I have to go to the grocery store,' instead of 'I get to go to the grocery store.' It is the chore to find time to go versus having the luxury of time to go.


The culture we live in has led to innovate new services such as Simon Delivers (now Coborns Delivers), who deliver groceries next-day to your door.  It changed the experience and conversation around grocery shopping from "I have to go to the grocery store,' to 'I get my groceries delivered to my door.'

The doctor holds the needle, figuratively and literally, impacting whether a patient has a negative or positive experience.  However, the experience extends beyond that doctor engagement from: Identifying problem / preventative measures --- Finding a doc --- Setting an appointment --- Not getting an estimate (lack of cost transparency) --- Getting to appointment --- The waiting room --- The interaction with doc (provider) --- Billing and insurance company.  Rinse, recycle, repeat.

WhiteGlove is a new model where members have care delivered to them at home or work, 365 days a year, 8am to 8pm. As a direct-pay primary care provider, members enjoy a comprehensive health care experience that includes primary/acute care, chronic care, wellness, diagnostics, and prescription medications.

With the complexity comes pain points as there is opportunity to transform the customer experience.  Everyone from the government, to the healthcare companies, to the community hospitals must work collectively and invest and value innovation to begin turning the ship.  Innovation must not only happen in a collaborative fashion across companies, but industries.  It is not one or two innovations that will change the conversation, it will be innovation to the way the healthcare system innovates that will change process and give anytime-anywhere care. Making you say, 'I get to see the doctor now.'

Why OptumHealth? Watch how we can help.

MISSION POSSIBLE

We at Carrot designed a booth for the UnitedHealth Group IT Summit behind the theme, 'Mission Possible.' The booths intent was to promote the new CIO (Chief Information Officer) Operating Model, a 12-step process participants learned at the booth through interactive games.

The value behind the CIO Model is: (1) More harmonious integration of business segments with IT; (2) Greater efficiency and cost savings; (3) Enhanced ability to move quickly and seize business opportunities. Each individual is an 'Agent of Change', making it possible to begin turning the large ship in the right direction of adopting the new process. Through takeaways and follow up communications, IT participants will be reminded why they are critical to the mission of the CIO Operating Model.