Tip three, inspiration. All right, so you have your brief, you understand the brand, you're ready to go. But before you put pen to paper, I would strongly advise gathering around you as much inspiration as possible. Now, this will start off, I would imagine, like most people, with with some desktop research, look at the client, look at their competitors, look at what they've been doing in terms of their advertising and events over the past few years. But don't stop there. You know, just bookmark stuff, screengrab things, whatever you need to do to create a folder of kind of inspiration for yourself.

I, my personal way of doing this is to go beyond the brand category. So if you're thinking about cars, don't just stop within the car industry. I think that's a is an error, because you end up with work that seems very similar to everybody else's. So you need to push out from that particular industry or that category and look beyond it. What you're trying to look at is or what you're trying to get inspiration for is, is, is, is a wonderful experience. Yes, needs to ultimately sell what your client is trying to sell.

Or perhaps they're just trying to reappraise their brand and get people to look at it again in a new way. Or maybe they are trying to sample You know, there's lots of different reasons for doing experiential marketing. But ultimately, it's marketing. It's about selling so we never forget that. But the experience has to come first. And we'll talk about that in a little while.

So once you've done some basic desktop research that goes beyond what's in the brief, get yourself away from the desk. I have been saying this for years and years. I'm very fortunate. I get to work with some brilliant advertising agencies, large and small. But one thing I do notice is, office culture seems to suddenly kind of tether people to their desks. Now I get it.

There's lots of work to be done. And desk work is is necessary in business and I enjoy doing it when I need to do it. You need to be at your desk so your colleagues can see you and talk with you. More often than not in advertising agencies, there's four or five meetings a day. So you need to be just around the office to be able to attend those. But please, please, please, if you're thinking of developing an experiential idea, go out and experience things as part of your job.

For example, I went to the David Bowie exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art here where I live in Brooklyn. And it took about I guess, two hours all in I was very busy. I was working for a bank and also for hotel, none of which seemed to link to Barry directly, but I wanted to experience the show. I'd heard great things about it. And sure enough, it was fabulous. It was really, really wonderful.

And I came away. truly inspired. My mind was On. I had notes scribbled everywhere, I've been emailing myself stuff on the way back from the museum. I came back feeling great, you know, I bought some vinyl. Some played that.

And, you know, if I have to draw a line between that experience and what I presented to the bank, in the end, I don't think I could directly draw the line. You know, the client said, well, you were at a museum when you should have been working on a project. But what it did do was, fuel my imagination with, you know, some of the best in class production. And, of course, you know, in terms of the actual exhibition itself was brilliantly done multimedia, great experience. But of course, the man himself. You know, creative geniuses have often bandied about all too readily these days, but he genuinely was, I'm not the hugest fan of his but he sets the bar for creativity, extremely high.

And I think very few of us will ever reach that bar, but it's there to aim for. So as a creative person, for person I found that really really wonderful to experience and to feel kind of ignited. So get out and experience stuff experience stuff away from what the clients businesses as well as going to experience you know, what a client does. If I work for retail for example, I will always go into their, their stores and do some secret shopping. If it's an auto clients, I will go to the showrooms, you know, hotel, I will go and sit in the lobby of the hotel or hire a room for the night, just under the skin of what's going on. And think about the the kind of the aspects of each experience and what makes it good and what makes it not so good.

Now, experience is interesting, you know, it's about all your senses. So think about things just through the senses. What does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it smell like? What does it taste like?

How Does it feel what is there to touch and play with what sort of tactical aspects are there to to enjoy or to think about my sort of inspiration also comes from, you know, experiences I've had in the past not just marketing experiences. I've had many of those over the years. But just things I've liked. So think of five things like you've enjoyed actual experiences, not say a movie or a game or something like that. But an actual physical, physical experience of going out and sort of engaged with fully and write down what you liked about it again, do it through the senses. For me, I think I often see audio or rather I hear audio and realize that they haven't really thought that through, you know, there's a new food mall in Brooklyn, and it's got various vendors from around New York, from bagels Katz's deli, there's Mexican food, as you know, there's also Lots of different foods, and Each place has its own music now, on paper, that's great, you know, communicates that brand.

They're kind of where they come from. entertains the staff, and the customers. The problem is, they're all playing it wants. So all you get is this horrible blend. Sound clashes awful, it's a train crash, it's dreadful. So they just obviously hadn't thought it through at the planning stage.

It looked good on paper, but doesn't work in reality. So, you know, think about things like that, how, how is that person going to feel when they're in your space or enjoying your event from each of the senses. So that's part of the inspiration. And that should help you start to develop some ideas as you as you think about those aspects in conjunction with the brief. So by the end of your inspiration sort of section, you should have a good mood board of ideas or at least Have some feelings and thoughts about what, what what's out there and what's working really well and what you enjoy. And then we'll move on to the next tip which is all about the audience.