Credit & Creativity
8 Mar
One of the most persistent personalities you will encounter in the gas stations are those sales agents offering credit cards that reward you with a 5% rebate when used to load gas or diesel. Over and above your usual credit card for shopping they offer an extra credit card just for loading processed fossil fuels into your car. The problem was not that people did not like the idea of having a credit card for gasoline but that one normally did not have the time to fill out the forms and whatever other requirements were needed to have the card. It’s a gas station for heaven’s sake and what a normal motorist wants to do is put the gas into the car and go. So to increase the number of memberships, the card company made a slight but wonderful modification in the application process – they equipped their agents with digital cameras. When a driver comes in to load gas and shows interest in a second card but seems like he has little time they take out the digital camera and reassure him or her that all they will have to do is take a picture of the driver’s license for documentation, answer a few questions and have them affix their signature at the bottom of the application. The last words the motorist hears as he pulls away is that he will be getting a call and will receive his card via messenger delivery. Eventually of course the best would be getting your new credit card right before you leave the gas station and not have to wait for the messenger.
This is a classic example of a company keeping an eye on their primary goal which is to sign up as many motorists as they can for the extra credit card. It also is an example of an organization that did its homework by listening to the customers.
Many innovative twists come from outside the company and not from the inside.
What this company did was ask themselves the question, “What if I were a motorist who had very little time to spend at the gas station but was interested in getting a gasoline credit card?” “How can we speed up and simplify the process?”
When being asked to be creative many ideas come into play and many of them during your brainstorming meetings will seem workable. The key is to make a short list of all the ideas and decide which of the projects has the maximum potential to solve the problem at hand, which in this case was getting members signed up as quickly as possible when they stopped for gas. You then focus your resources on what project you have decided is best and push it to produce the results you want.
Again, looking at this case, one has a few questions in mind. How do we get the ideas out during the meetings? How do we make a short list of all the ideas coming in? For years the digital camera has had the potential to record documents and yet only this year has it been recruited, at least for this situation, to speed up the card application process.
How does one connect one idea to the other? How does a team produce wild ideas that don’t go over the edge? How will someone in your team use his or her broad experience to produce solutions that will add to the organization’s longevity in the industry?
With our credit card example, a creative solution was created to help willing people in a hurry. The willing people are everywhere! They just have different scenarios and different needs. The creative breakthrough that you are looking for will come when you learn how to put yourselves in their shoes and experience their lives even for a moment. Will you find out what needs changing? Will you create and carry out a plan? Will you give your creative solution the attention, manpower, and funding that it deserves?
The creative solutions are out there. You only need to know where to look, and have the follow-through to carry it out.
