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When you need a fresh campaign idea, it’s tempting to ask ChatGPT for something “outside the box.” That usually produces familiar tactics with unusual names.
A better move is to give it a business and an industry that seems to have nothing in common with it. The distance forces you to look past surface similarities and ask how the other industry earns attention, builds trust, or gets people to come back.
Say you sell accounting software and choose escape rooms. The useful connection probably isn’t an escape room themed ad. It might be the way an escape room gives people a series of small clues and a clear sense of progress. That could become an onboarding campaign that helps new customers complete one financial task at a time.
The test is whether the borrowed idea changes a real customer experience. If it only changes the imagery or headline, keep looking.
Try this prompt:
My business sells [product or service] to [audience]. They struggle with [specific problem]. I want more of them to [desired action]. Our main constraint is [budget, channel, time, or other limit].
Choose one industry that seems unrelated to mine. Identify a specific way that industry helps customers make progress, build trust, or return. Explain the underlying principle without copying its visual style or slogans.
Turn that principle into one marketing idea for my business. Include the customer moment it addresses, what we would create, how we could test it on a small scale, and what result would suggest it is worth developing.
Flag any assumptions about my customers that I should check before using the idea. Avoid a connection that is only a theme or metaphor.
Use the output as a starting point. Check whether the customer behavior it assumes matches what you’ve actually seen. The strangest connection is only valuable if it helps someone take the next step.
Happy prompting!
Yes, that Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He has a newsletter on beehiiv. So do Codie Sanchez, Jay Shetty, David Begnaud, Colin & Samir, and Joanna Stern.
They could publish just about anywhere. They chose beehiiv to build a direct connection with the people who want to hear from them most. And you can do the same, whether you’re world-famous or just at the start of your plan for world domination.
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