All ideas start in the left brain. That’s where reading and writing, calculation, and logical thinking hang out.
In our radio stations many ideas and conversations stop there, never crossing over to the right brain, where dimensions, creativity, and emotion are interpreted. We talk about the music as though we’re doing inventory. (“We have 12 of the red ones and 40 of the blue ones”), we talk about “shifts” instead of “shows”, and discuss promotions like we’re using the Associated Press style book of Who, What, When, and Where.
Staying in the left brain is how we end up with dry-as-sandpaper promotions like Clergy Appreciation Month, Local Music Project, and my all-time “favorite” the Bereavement Conference 2016.
If you’ve ever talked on the air about a Family 4-Pack of tickets, a gift card, or told listeners to “enroll/register/download”, you’ve stopped short of taking the idea over to the emotional right side of the brain.
You may have the ‘what’ but you don’t have the ‘why’.
The goal is to make people care.
“Feelings inspire people to act. For people to take action, they have to care.”
~Chip and Dan Heath “Made to Stick“
There is no idea so brilliant that it can’t be made utterly ineffective through the presentation of left-brained information.
Yes, all ideas start in the left brain, but that doesn’t mean they have to stop there.
