Take whatever it is you're working on, and brainstorm 20 product benefits. Say you're working on Legos. Here are 20...
- Fun
- Make you smart
- imaginative
- indestructable
- timeless
- appeal to all ages
- no language barrier
- teach kids about connections
- you can lose track of time
- they keep your kids quiet
- interactive
- so much better than watching TV or playing video games
- MIT has a Lego Lab
- colorful
- They're a step-up from Duplo
- Variety of sets (space/medieval/town/Star Wars)
- Not hard to find
- Play that doesn't make you dirty
- Always enough to share
- You can build with as much or as little as you like.
Once you have your list of 20 product benefits, start doing ads for each area. For this, do some ads about how Legos appeal to all ages. See how far you can go with that. Then do some ads about how you can add to the sets. Or how, unlike other toys, they're still fun when you lose a couple pieces. Obviously, some benefits will be better than others. I'm not sure how many people ever bought Legos because they're "colorful." Still, do three ads per benefit, and suddenly you've got 60 ideas. Keep doing ads off every benefit until you realize which area is the most fertile. Then go do more ads in that direction.
You may not always have a brief. But you should always be working off a strategy. This is just one simple way of finding out what that might be.
By the way, don't do ads for Legos. Too studenty.
(Much love to Coz Cotzias who showed me how to do this a decade ago.)