If you look up the term bandwidth in the dictionary, you get this: “a range of frequencies within a given band, in particular those used for transmitting a signal.”

Have you ever thought about your brand in terms of its “brandwidth”? Have you ever asked yourself how widely you can let the “brand signal” go and have it still sound like your brand?

It’s a bad pun, but a productive metaphor.

We face this “brandwidth” challenge all the time at Ideasicle because for most idea-projects we are relatively, or completely, new to the brand in question. That’s often the reason we’re hired - we are automatic outside perspective - but, still, we try our best to ground ourselves in what the brand’s “width” already is, or has been. Only then can we come up with ideas that will be fresh, exciting and new, while still staying true to the brand.

We go too far, on purpose. For example, recently we presented multiple ideas to the New York Times. The Ideasicle Team purposely presented a range of ideas that exceeded what we perceived the NYT’s brandwidth to be, just to be safe. On one extreme, we had ideas that may have copped the frequency of The NY Post. On the other extreme, perhaps more like the Wall Street Journal. And plenty right through the uprights. But expanding our brand purview is our way to make sure we have plenty of ideas that cover the brand spectrum, but some that push its boundaries.

Oh, the magic of going too far.

Now, the client may or may not have a good sense of their brandwidth (the New York Times has an excellent sense of theirs, by the way), so going through an Ideasicle ideation process with multiple ideas across a wide spectrum yields responses like, “Love it. That’s totally us.” or “Love it, but we wouldn’t do that.” Pretty cut and dried. But then there’s often this response, one that I personally crave: “Oh, man, that would be so cool!”

That, my friends, is the sound of a client’s brand popping a button in its pants as it expands to accommodate a new gem of an idea. Brandwidth wider.

So, out-ideate your brandwidth.

It’s one thing to think about your brand in the abstract. It’s quite another to actively react to actual ideas that your brand could actually execute to really know the tolerance of your brand as it is, and the elasticity of your brand as it could be. A long list of potent ideas rapid-fire, again, across a wide spectrum, will help you chisel away at your brand giving it meaning, much like a sculptor chisels away at a slab of marble giving it form.

Challenge your agency partners to bring in piles of ideas. Push them to out-ideate your brandwidth. Because, even if you only execute a fraction of the ideas, the exercise itself will keep your brandwidth in graphic relief.

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