Madison Avenue powerhouse BBDO has done more than deliver legendary ads for Burger King, Pepsi and Wisk detergent. The ad agency that came up with ‘The Pepsi Generation’ and ‘Ring Around the Collar’ is also home to the often misunderstood practice of ‘brainstorming,’ which was first introduced in the late 1930s by Alex Faickney Osborn—the ‘O’ in BBDO.

Contrary to popular myth, brainstorming is not an excuse to sit around a stack of empty pizza boxes and crushed soda cans telling jokes. Unstructured brainstorming can quickly devolve to unproductive gabfests and gripe sessions. Bruised egos are the most frequent casualty of an unsuccessful brainstorming bash.

The goal of brainstorming is to generate as many ideas as possible. Participants who feel free to relax and joke around will come up with the sort of unconventional thought that can be paraded around later as genius—it’s the same thought behind the ‘monkey and a typewriter’ theory. Get enough people in a room and someone will come up with a masterpiece.

More Is More

Remember, brainstorming is about quantity, not quality. Your goal is to leave your brainstorming session with a smorgasbord of ideas to wade through later. To create a collaborative environment, withhold critical judgments until you get to the phase of critical thinking and until then, have fun!

Brainstorming is best practiced under the guidance of a skilled facilitator, but a trained professional isn’t always necessary. Good brainstorming can be done anywhere, anytime by anyone willing to follow these steps:

Define Your Challenge
Be specific. A poorly designed creative challenge can lead to a lot of ideas that fail to solve your problem, and ideas that fail to solve your problem are worthless. Specific questions like, "What one improvement will motivate more people to buy our product?" take you to the heart of the matter.

Limit Your Time
Sharp minds work best when they’re sharply focused. Limit the brainstorming session to 20 or 25 minutes (longer for larger groups) so participants don’t get restless. You could also give yourself an idea limit. Push for 50 or 100 ideas and then come to a stop.

Shout Out Your Ideas
As participants share ideas, the facilitator should write each one on the dry-erase board or flip-chart—no matter how silly they might be. Remember, ideas generate ideas. That’s why creating an environment where ideas can be freely exchanged is vitally important.

Setting the Mood

The best thing about brainstorming is that you can set the mood without dimming the lights. It’s all about relaxation and minimal distraction. A handful of Hershey Kisses™ works wonders, as do crayons, markers and paper. Beyond that, you want minimal distraction. No music. No cell phones. No instant messaging. If your client conference room is easily interrupted, take the meeting offsite. Find a hip restaurant or tapas bar that will let you meet on a slow-business afternoon.

Sometimes it makes sense to bring items that stimulate discussion, but it’s best if the items relate to the subject at hand. If we were creating an ad campaign for a travel agency, I might use seashells, postcards and the scent of suntan lotion to give the participants a mental buddy pass to where the agency promises to go. If we ideate around a product, I usually begin with a general brainstorm session, and then bring out the product for more focused brainstorming.

Remember, brainstorming is a collaborative effort. As it does in planning a good party, success depends on the guest list you put together. Gather participants from diverse backgrounds and encourage them to leave their egos at home. After all, you’re not looking for the ‘best’ idea while you brainstorm, you’re looking for ideas that generate more ideas. If your session goes well, your final concept will bear the fingerprints of all who were involved.

Idea Mining

With your brainstorming session complete, you’ve got ideas you can mine. If you’re not doing idea refinement on your own, let your participants drive the process. Including your group in this process gives you access to the diverse thought processes that helped you come up with your idea batch in the first place.

Start by throwing out ideas that are repeats. Then, put similar ideas into similar categories. From there, you’ll want to refine your list to a final list of five. Use statements that begin with the word ‘should’ to define your criteria. For example, your idea should be cost-effective, or it should be environmentally friendly. Toss out any ideas that don’t meet the criteria.

A good facilitator will ask follow-up questions to keep participants on their feet—both during the brainstorming session and during the critical thinking phase. In some circles, these qualifying questions are called cubing because they box an idea in, like a cube.

Describe it
What does it look, taste, feel or sound like?

Compare it
What ideas already exist that are similar to the idea?

Apply it
Give us a real-world example of the idea in practice.

Argue for or against it
This is the fun part. The best way to test an idea’s strength is to see if you can shoot it down.

Building on the Building-Block Basics

Of course, the above techniques present ideation in its most basic form—call them the building blocks of basic brainstorming. Every ad agency has its own take on this classic process, which is good, since the process itself is often driven by personality.

Since brainstorming facilitation is a personality-driven process, it makes sense to play to your own personal strengths. What are those strengths? Why not do your own product research? Pull together a participation group, ask some tough questions and see what you get on the whiteboard.