Love is dangerous. It can make us blind to obvious red flags. Falling in love with a campaign idea is no different.
This exercise helps me reduce unconscious bias:
Create an ad
A few weeks ago, I was working on an ad for Ground Up Ventures. I needed something that would be fun, easy to produce, and break the “boring VC firm” stereotype:
Premortem
But, right before heading out to post them on the streets of Tel Aviv, I felt like I was missing something. So, I did a premortem.
Psychologist Gary Klein invented the premortem technique to help teams identify potential pitfalls. It’s simple:
I) Imagine your project was a disaster.
II) List the reasons that made it fail.
III) Prevent the failure.
Ask AI
The prompt:
ACT AS: Strategist and legal advisor for marketing agencies.CONTEXT: To promote my VC firm, I posted 100 tear-off ads around Tel Aviv.
• Copy – “Have you seen a unicorn?*
*A baby unicorn (pre-seed/seed stage) with a magical solution to a major problem.
If found, please email neal@groundup.vc
Reward: $500k – $1.5M”
• Visuals – An illustration of a cute baby unicorn and QR codes that leads to the firm’s LinkedIn.OUTCOME: The campaign was a complete failure.YOUR TASK: Identify and analyze all of the reasons the campaign may have failed, considering the questions below. Present your findings in a table.1. What was the most significant blind spot we overlooked?2. Were there any assumptions that everyone agreed on without verification?3. Were there regulatory risks we didn’t account for?4. Did we ignore or underestimate any financial risks?5. Were there ethical considerations we overlooked?6. What external events were responsible for our failure?
Outcome:
🤦♂️ I missed the most obvious problem. It’s illegal to post tear-off ads.
Not a big deal if you’re a guitar teacher, but a big company will get into trouble.
Oh well. I posted it on LinkedIn and moved on to the next idea. That’s (the creative) life.
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