The population of Las Vegas, Nevada in 1900 was twenty two. It would not officially become a city for six more years. Back then, few people had ever heard of it. Now, it is one of the top tourist destinations in the world.
That did not happen by accident. The movers and shakers in the city over the years have continuously worked hard to keep Vegas relevant and fresh. In the 1930’s construction of the Hoover Dam brought thousands to the area. Then, the gambling houses along Fremont street became the attraction.
The now famous Las Vegas Strip was simply a desolate road when the mob-backed Flamingo hotel was built. But, the much larger, swankier hotels built there began to overshadow the predominantly Western-themed places on Fremont street.
Through the years there have been boom and bust times but Vegas has always come back stronger because it has never been afraid to move on with the times.
America’s playground indeed!
Not Fade Away was a Buddy Holly song which the Rolling Stones released a cover version of in 1964. It became their first top ten hit. Throughout the ‘60’s, guitar driven pop music ruled the charts. In the early 1970s songs with a harder edge emerged as the more favored tracks. Rather than staying stubbornly stuck in their original genre paradigm, the Stones shifted. And, they kept producing hits.
Later in the decade, disco ruled the radio. Once again, the Stones reimagined their music. To quote the site Ultimate Classic Rock, “The Rolling Stones entered 1978 in need of a rebound. They were pinned in by disco on one side and punk on the other, stuck in a creative rut that led some critics to proclaim they were yesterday’s news…”
They released an album with a very different sound, Some Girls. It sold well and scored a top five hit with the disco-esque song Miss You.
Today, 60 years after their founding, the Stones are still going.
Hanafuda are a style of Japanese playing cards. On the face of each card is a depiction of plants, animals, birds, or man-made objects. The back side is usually plain and traditionally colored either red or black. Hanafuda are used to play a variety of games. Prior to reading this article, I would wager many folks have never heard of hanafuda.
But, everyone has heard of a company who began selling them in 1889.
Games utilizing these cards were popular in late 19th and early 20th century Japan. However, times shifted and demand for these cards began to wane. So, the company began to diversify into other lines of cards. It reimagined what it was.
In 1959, the company contracted with Walt Disney to incorporate his company’s animated characters into cards and developed a distribution system that allowed it to offer its products in toy stores. By 1961, the company had sold more than 1.5 million card packs.
The only constant in the world is change. That is certainly true of the home entertainment industry. Though the microchip was invented in 1959, it was not until 1971 that mass manufacturing lowered the cost of chips dramatically. Seeing this and recognizing what it could mean for producing home entertainment products that utilized microchips, the company reimagined itself once more. They decided to go headlong into the electronic games industry. And, as the old saying goes, the rest is history.
Oh, who is this company that began in 1889? None other than Nintendo!
To stay relevant like Vegas, the Stones and Nintendo you must learn to adapt to the current times and trends. You must continuously innovate.
To continuously innovate, creativity is essential. Contrary to what you may have heard, creativity doesn’t have to be random. While almost everyone has an occasional a-ha moment, to be consistently creative a methodical approach is required. See, we as human beings are born naturally creative but many of us have not exercised that aspect of ourselves since we were preschoolers. So, the ability has atrophied.
In order to reawaken our natural creativity, a planned approach is needed. Below is one such approach that you can use to stimulate creative ideas within your organization.
The MAGNIFY Method
When I am developing strategies for clients, a creative thinking method I use often is MAGNIFY.
What is the MAGNIFY method? It’s a method of stimulating creative thought that can help you discover new ways to position your current offerings. Magnify is taking the whole or some part of your subject and greatly enhancing it or dramatically upping the scale.
Some real-world success examples of this are:
- A show that ran on the Travel Channel for eight seasons, Man vs. Food
- The 77 pack of Natural Light beer that Anheuser-Busch sold in 2017 to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the brand’s launch.
- The ridiculously large potato on the back of a semi-truck that travels the U.S. as part of the Grown in Idaho campaign.
To help you figure out if and how this method can help you, here are some questions to ask. Note: These are the exact questions we use when developing strategies for clients and in our MAGNIFY Method Creative Thinking Training FUNshop.
- What can be added?
- Can we provide or take more time?
- Could we make it stronger?
- Is making it higher a possibility?
- What if we made it longer?
- What can be exaggerated?
- What features could be overstated?
- How about greater frequency?
- If we add extra features, could that make our product/service unique?
- What can add extra value?
- What can be magnified, made larger or extended?
- How can something be carried to a dramatic extreme?
Try asking these questions and applying the MAGNIFY method to your business or products. It may just result in the next BIG idea!
