Belly Up to The !dea BAR for Your Next Big Idea
SEE THE WORK OF CHIMERA COMMUNICATIONS…Click Here.
Forget the 4Ps of Marketing – Learn the C-Words!
DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY IN BUSINESS & PERSONAL CONSULTING
The !dea BAR is literally a pop up bar (think trade show booth) where individuals or teams can “belly up” for a fabulous mix of business and personal consulting, idea generation, brainstorming, and face-to-face honesty and humor that will leave you buzzing with excitement. Download our brochure.
The Ideatender, Nancy Brockman, is also the Owner and Creative Director of Chimera Communications. Nancy has been generating ideas for the firm’s Marketing-Communications clients for nearly 30 years…ideas that were ahead of their time, right on time, and just in time.
The simple formula Nancy has used in developing brands for clients nationwide — Surprise, Relevance and Emotion — is how she solves any issue over the whiteboard top of the !dea BAR.
Click Here For Examples of Bar Brainstorms
Types of questions solved over a conversation at The !dea BAR:
- Why isn’t my website working for me 24/7?
- How do I get my employees/team jazzed about customer service?
- What can I do to get my Board of Directors to engage?
- I can’t write a sales letter or prepare a presentation to save my life – help.
- I need ideas on how to differentiate myself/my company/product from the rest.
- I need a ROI for our social media program…what do we do?
- I’m worried about my (family member)…how do I start a conversation?
- I don’t love my job…how do I love it? Or what should I do next?
- We love our logo (or hate it) but need help with defining our brand.
- We need the next good idea for our product line.
- We have this great product, but it needs a name, a tag line.
- I just want to laugh about this world we live in and spill out my concerns at “the bar.”
How It Works
Grab an orange stool and start brainstorming with your personal Ideatender.
People who belly up to the !dea BAR literally grab an orange stool, take a seat, have a beverage (or not), and start brainstorming with a proven creative-mind that’s decades in the making (Nancy…read about her below). Time at the BAR is like a chiropractic adjustment to your creative mind…a shot (or many) of creativity. It’s that simple. And the only hangover you’ll have is because your mind is jacked-up and spinning with ideas to prioritize and get moving on.
The !dea BAR is like speed-dating consulting, except unlike dating, there is no ego in the game. Set The !dea BAR up at your company and filter as many department heads through as you can in a day or two. Sessions could be as quick as 20 minutes and probably not longer than an hour. Different, right? Most consulting firms want to come in, spend a week learning about you, go back to their offices, devise a plan that might take months to “complete” and over that period of time the enthusiasm within your organization wanes. It’s not NEW enough, not fresh. The consultant becomes part of your team and that means he/she/they has ego in the game. Nancy just wants to do quick chiropractic creative adjustments that produce ideas that the bar visitor then takes back as their own and can implement using their expertise. It’s empowering.
Where And How It Works
The !dea BAR can be set up for one day, two days, or more. It’s like a thinking binge.
The !dea BAR is great for:
Chamber of Commerce Events;
Expos and Trade Shows;
Board Rooms and BORED Rooms;
Employee Break Rooms or Cafeterias:
College Student Unions and Job Fairs;
Retreats for Non-profits and For-profits;
(Side note – why are these called retreats? Isn’t that the opposite of what those things are for….advancement?)
Anyway, you get the idea. Wherever there is a need for a shot of creativity…that’s where the bar serves up the best thinks.
So what will your bar tab be? That depends on the situation. We will craft a package for you that typically includes a flat day-rate and travel expenses.
In one day, as many as 10-15 people could belly up to The Idea Bar — it just depends on the topic/level of brainstorm/discussion times. Let’s discuss what might work!
Your Ideatender is Nancy
What matters most is the decision to matter. I believe creativity solves everything.
Welcome, what are `ya having? I’m Nancy Brockman.
So why did I create The !dea BAR? Why not just keep doing fun marketing, advertising, content development work for our Chimera Communications clients? Well, we are continuing to do that for the clients we love. But honestly, our industry has changed. It’s become a numbers game. And numbers hurt my brain (and those of most “Creatives”). I want to get back to the power of “The Idea.” A brilliant guy I know once said, “Nancy, you can put a lot of makeup on a corpse, but it’s still dead.” I think he meant you can over-design ads but if they don’t say anything, the ads won’t sell anything. Which is, indeed, true. I’d like to twist that a bit and say that dressing up a bad idea simply doesn’t work. But a good idea…a great idea…a different idea…no matter how it’s dressed…will change the world. Think about all of the ideas inside of Steve Jobs…and he wore the same thing every day. (Confession…I do too and so does the Mark from Facebook and so did Albert Einstein.)
I’m not going to pretend I have all the ideas you’ll need to solve your challenges, create your opportunities…but you do. And that’s what I’m good at…getting inside your creative brain and pulling out what you need. Bartenders are good listeners. And while a lot of people who know me might laugh at me calling myself a “good listener,” I actually am. I just listen faster than most. And I’m Italian – translation: excitable and talk with my hands.
So the truth is, I’m an idealist. And that word has two words in it. Idea and List. Spend one hour at The !dea BAR and we’ll come up with a list of ideas for you. WE will come up with them…together. Can’t have more fun than that. Then YOU take the ideas…you own them…and implement them using your talent and skills.
I have had a long-standing fear that I would die and on my memorial bench they would write “SHE HAD A LOT OF GOOD IDEAS.” I feared that scenario because I was worried a bunch of genuinely good ideas would not become reality. Now…they will. Because some of the ideas we generate over the bar, sitting on orange stools, will become reality…because YOU will make it so. And, for that, I’m grateful.
If you want to download a brochure (I still do that…come on…you do too)…click here for the pdf.
view bio
Nancy began Chimera Communications, Inc. in 1993 in Albany, New York and moved the business and her life to Durango, Colorado in June of 1996. She holds a BA in English and Business Administration from the University of New Hampshire. Having started her communications career at VOGUE magazine on Madison Avenue in New York as a features writer, she returned to New Hampshire and worked in the advertising industry there for several years. She’s worked on the client side of the fence in banks (big and small) and with General Electric’s R&D Center.
Nancy leads the Creative Team at her company and believes the idea is king and has a bunch of her own. (The all new !dea BAR being the latest). She thinks of headlines in her sleep and in the shower. She changes the channel to watch commercials (yup, that person), starts her mornings with SNL’s APP, and is addicted to great Visual Storytelling. Known as one of those “creative types” – she hasn’t worn business clothes in a very long time. She can still talk like a Jersey girl, but only after a few adult beverages. Nancy tells it like it is…because, after all…all good things come from the truth. Good friends, skiing, hiking, boating, Harleys, her animals and her getaway called The Hillbilly Hotel all balance out her life.