The joy of being uncomfortable.

New ways of thinking create a sense of discomfort. So next time you are asked to come up with or judge ideas, don’t settle for that concept that feels right. You’ll be disappointed in the long run.

Push. Be nervous. Take a chance.

Find the one that makes you a little uncomfortable—the one that stands out. You’ll know it. When you think back about the presentation, it will be the one you think of first. When you tell your spouse over dinner, you’ll gauge his/her reaction to see if it really is too far out there.

Remember, new ideas are, by definition, different. That’s what makes them special.

There is a risk to being different. You might stand out. You may attract attention. You could be talked about.

Just a word about almost all of Quiznos advertising and any number of youth-oriented ads. Being different just to be different is annoying. Be unique with a sensibility about your target. Be smart, clever, even vulgar. But weird is still weird. Don’t be weird.

It is a fine line between insightful and silly. Trust your gut. And remember to be happily uncomfortable.

Are you facing the right direction?

I met with a small software company. They make software that helps accountants comply with new federal reporting regulations.

They said they were looking for a marketer with software marketing experience. Of course. If you spend all day looking at your product, it would be easy to assume that you were in the software business.

But that’s a mistake. They were facing the wrong way. If they were looking for category experience, it shouldn’t be in software. What they needed was a marketer who knew accountants.

What knowledge is more important in selling their software—the traditional rollout pattern of software or what problems CFO’s face?

They were facing backwards towards their own product rather than forwards toward their customer.

Have you found yourself selling to internal stakeholders, selling against competitors instead of selling to your customers?

Stop and look at the last communication you created. Are you talking to your customer’s needs or are you talking about your product?

After countless internal meetings it’s easy to get turned around. But before you send out anything more, make sure you are facing the right direction.

You can’t cut your own hair.

I’ve heard some reticence from my client and agency friends about outside resources.

For clients, it is the concern that these outside folks won’t have the depth of knowledge about their product or service. Exactly. That’s why you want fresh eyes on your product. Sometimes you get so caught up in the minutia of your professional existence that you lose the big picture. You forget that the consumer doesn’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of your category.

For agencies, you get caught up in getting the day-to-day and lose track of why clients brought you in in the first place. You are the fresh eyes that I spoke about in the last paragraph. So stop reacting and start leading.

If you are an agency or if you are responsible for ideas, once a quarter, bring in a team of freelance creatives. These people are paid to generate ideas and are comfortable coming up with a quantity of ideas. Pay them by the hour.

Put a little time into how you will direct the brainstorm. Don’t just give them your problem and ask them to solve it, even though they will. Ask them to do a little homework an come with examples of ideas they like.

As a creative, I always enjoyed what I called the cheap, one-night stand of concepting. That is, just create a bunch of ideas and don’t worry about how they might be carried out thru a variety of media.

You’ll find those people who will give you a couple of hours for a couple of hundred dollars. Rotate thru some and keep some you really like.

Every quarter, you’ll work on the idea part of the business and not just the execution part of the business. Keep your people in the room with the concepters and they will come out energized. And you’ll have a hundred new ideas every quarter.

Look, they won’t all be good. They won’t be all brand voice correct. They may not pass the CEO’s crazy tests. But fresh perspectives are where ideas are born. And you don’t have that perspective if you’ve been caught up in the day-to-day of your business.

Fresh Perspectives. It’s as easy as remembering that you can’t cut your own hair.