Audrina from The Hills explains brand brainstorming

Brandstorming. It’s a cool word, an even cooler practice. You sit in a room and start concentrating about a creative idea. You try to push it to the limits of possibility and identify unique associations with that idea. Brandstorming is critical to campaign development and implies understanding not only what audience you’re selling to, but what messages the will find relevant. It’s really putting yourself in their shoes to better appreciate the idiosyncrasies of their purchasing behaviors and their individual motivations.

As a brand representative of The Hills, Audrina Partridge has been kind enough to offer her own suggestions for how to undergo a really intense brandstorming session.

Audrina: Well, Max, I’m not quite sure what you want me to say here...


Max: Just talk about how you and the producers of The Hills brainstorm about developing you into a commodity…


Audrina: Ok, that works!


Audrina: The first thing to good brandstorming is to provide yourself with the tools for creative expression. You want to make sure that when those ideas come bubbling up from your lecherous and innovative subconscious, that they can achieve full expression without being edited by language, preconceptions, or prior reference. Helpful tip: get yourself a scrapbook and some coloured pencils. Use these to get your ideas out in the least constrained way possible.

Max: And what if I like to work on a laptop?

Audrina: Ok well laptops are great for collaborating and working quickly on big projects, so just make sure that you’re well supported in your original idea before taking it to digital. I’d recommend starting on paper. The best ideas come straight from palm to pulp, it’s more organic that way!

Max: Any other tips?

Audrina: so definitely get involved with other people keen on helping you develop the brand. It’d suck to perform brandstorming alone or in isolation where you can’t bounce ideas off each other and generate a creative self-perpetuating energy that everyone can feed off of.

Max: I guess what you’re trying to say is that it’s like playing catch. You need someone pitching ideas and someone who can capture them.

Audrina: Exactly! It’s helpful when you bring a lot of energetic people to the table who each brings a different point of view The worst scenario is when you have a bunch of vanilla cakers and they just spill the same schlock out day after day.

Max: Like the SoCal WASP cast of The Hills?

Audrina: Exactly!

Max: Any final suggestions for making a brandstorming meeting successful?


Audrina: Just remember to not edit yourself when thinking about ideas. Talking out loud is one of the most helpful brandstorming practices that you can do. It precipitates a discussion and good idea generation among a team of like-minded people. It’s also a terrific way to hear what other people are thinking about, and sometimes they will say things which you haven’t even considered.

Max: thanks Audrina!

Remember, you can watch new episodes of The Hills on MTV, Sunday’s at 10.