Digital PR Resources for Ideation and Sell-In: 2 Free Templates

We all know how difficult it can be to consistently come up with ideas 9-5, and the truth is we all know that we’re more creative outside of these hours. 

But no matter how or when you feel most creative, to ideate outstanding campaigns as a digital PR, being informed with client goals and objectives has never been more crucial.

With relevance becoming the newest PR/SEO buzzword when it comes to generating ideas for our clients (and rightly so), being informed with all the tools you need before ideation is an essential part of creating the best ideas.

We’ve created two templates to support your creative process, which I’ve shared and explored below!

1. Ideation Brief Template

The day before an ideation session, we share what we call an ideation brief internally.

You may already have a similar type of brief for your team, but we find that having a centralised document instead of a pre-ideation deck or talking through the brief can be less efficient when generating ideas. 

The ideation brief template clearly outlines everything a participant would need to know; a few of the prompts include: 

Existing Tone of Voice – {Exploring their existing content, is it practical? Very much on-topic/sensible/education? Or is it broad and very much about getting that shock factor?

Digital Footprint – What reputation/news is there around the brand? Is the founder well-known? Did they recently announce/do anything big? i.e. new product, service launches, fundraising

Themes/ topics – Insert bullet points of theme ideas & look in Buzzsumo at theme word clouds ‘Discover > Topics’

Questions being asked around topic/product – Use Answer the Public or Google’s ‘people ask’ section to determine some key questions that content ideas could answer around themes and the client’s product

Competitor content – Simply put, what competitor content is out there we can take inspiration from?

Inspiration – Link out to articles or campaigns you’ve seen in the same space, use Buzzsumo to see what is trending right now, ask the client account lead for any thoughts.

Client Insight – Can you include any content the client has done previously? What kind of ideas do they like versus what should we avoid?

Try out the template ahead of your next ideation, and let us know if it helps you generate more relevant and newsworthy ideas! 

2. Ideation Sheet Template

During our actual ideations at Kaizen, we do a lot of brainwriting. Participants create a list of several ideas over a few minutes and then swap papers with someone else, who then adds ideas on top. This means participants aren’t shouting over one another but gain access to each other’s ideas for inspiration.

With the advent of COVID and remote working, we took this from pens and paper to a digital platform, which enhanced our methods.

At the end of an ideation session, instead of marking each idea to vote for our favourites, we now use automated count functions on Google Sheets, which has the bonus of hiding what other people have voted for until the end. As such, there’s less in the way of “bandwagoning” on ideas that other people have liked.

Here’s how to use the sheet in detail:

1. Name each tab as a person’s name joining the ideation. You can put up to 6 people. See screenshot below:

2. At the beginning of your ideation session, start writing your ideas in your name’s tab on the first row – you will be able to write four ideas per tab. See the example screenshot below:

3. When you finish writing your first four ideas in your tab, move on to the next tab – in this case, Sarah would move to Marina’s tab and fill in her next four ideas in the second row. See the example screenshot below:

4. Continue filling out the sheet, moving on to the next tab as you finish writing your rows of ideas until the ideation host tells you to stop!

5. When the ideation host announces that you should start voting for ideas, write in a character or letter underneath the ideas you like in your designated colour (i.e. Sarah is Purple, Marina is Red, Callum is Orange etc.). A few things to note:

• It doesn’t matter what letter or character you use to vote underneath all the ideas you like or want to vote for – it will count any character or letter you put as one vote ie. 1 or I.
• You’ll notice that when adding in your vote, it will be hidden – this is to ensure that people aren’t voting for the same ideas because others are! See here a screenshot on how to populate a vote on an idea if your colour was purple, for example:

6. When everyone finishes voting across all the ideas on all tabs, the ‘Results – Scope Out’ tab will populate the ideas with the most votes. You can then filter the ideas to show them in order of the number of votes. 

7. When scoping out ideas at a later stage – there is a section that outlines scoping the feasibility of pursuing an idea. See screenshot below:

• The ideation sheet prompts the following five considerations when scoping out an idea:
  • Is the idea newsworthy?
  • Is it likely to get signed off?
  • Does it have a WOW factor?
  • Is it relevant (to the client and news)?
  • What is your gut instinct?
• You can also add comments in the section box provided if any further clarification is needed. Up to 3 people can scope out the ideas in this way, ie. AMs, Head of PR, Execs etc.

Happy Ideating!

Looking for some added support and creativity with your next Digital PR campaign? Get in touch and find out how our team could help.