Laughter sets your mind free

pie in the face

A few days ago I was part of a brainstorming session for a client who recently opened a new restaurant in Mexico. The goal of the brainstorming session was to come up with ideas on how to create an experience that would make customers talk about it to their friends.

With that in mind, I proposed an idea:

What if we create a drink called Pulpo Enamorado that when delivered by the waiter, the customer gets a pie in the face?

Result: Everyone started laughing!

It caught everyone by surprise. Totally unexpected.

As you can imagine everyone thought this was nuts. How can a customer not get mad after getting smashed with a pie in the face?

Well, why not? The customer and everyone there is certainly going to remember it, I said with a grin 🙂

Even though everyone thought of it nuts, it got them into the flow. They started polishing it and came up with other ideas. I kept probing. The sparks flew and the idea took us on a road to think about a fundamentally fun and memorable experience for our client. One were laughs take prominence over the meal, though not too much.

The point of proposing outlandish ideas is to stretch people’s minds, to get uncomfortable. To set your mind free! To think about stuff that doesn’t exist in the current reality.

Who knows if ”the pie in the face’ will end up getting implemented at the end. Nobody wants to make their customers mad, but nobody wants to be seen like another ‘me-too’ experience.

So there you go, laugh and set your mind free!

 

 

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