My MediaPost Column: Your Next Big Idea Isn't Online Yet

This column first ran in MediaPost on November 3, 2026.

Marketers everywhere are typing prompts into the same AI tools, trained on the same internet. Ask for a fresh brand idea and you'll get a sleek, smart answer.

So will your competitors.

The questions behind standout products don't live in a database. They show up in how people move, what they touch and what they can't put into words. That's why some of the most valuable time a brand team can spend is outside its category, with people who meet the same human needs in a different business.

Here's how to make the most out of this strategy.

Start with why people really buy. Hunger is only part of why people buy snacks. They also buy them to celebrate surviving a long Monday, to unwind on the couch or to pass around on game night. For celebration, watch how a bridal salon turns trying on a dress into a milestone. If it's unwinding, spend an afternoon in an independent bookstore where people lose track of time. And a board game café shows how connection happens, as strangers end up around one table.

Then look at how other businesses turn first-timers into regulars. At a good surf school, instructors make sure beginners stand up on the board on day one, even for a few seconds. In a beginner pottery class, everyone leaves holding something they made, however lopsided. What's the first win your product delivers, and how fast does a new buyer get it? That moment decides whether trial turns into repeat.

Your senses matter just as much. In a bean-to-bar chocolate workshop, you feel how temperature changes the snap and shine of a bar. In a perfumer's studio, one drop of a raw ingredient changes the mood of the whole blend. People register cues like these long before they can describe them, which is why surveys so often miss them. They can inspire packaging, texture, sonic branding and retail design.

Then go behind closed doors. Hours before a restaurant opens, the kitchen is already in motion. Backstage, a theater crew builds the scene before the audience walks in. Much of an experience is decided before the customer shows up. So ask what happens before your customers ever touch your product, and whether it sets them up for the moment they do.

Go where people repair what they love: a watch repair counter, a sneaker restorer, a doll hospital. People pay to save things that would be cheaper to replace, and they're happy to tell you why. That's a kind of loyalty most brand trackers never measure.

And make one stop that seems completely unrelated. A brand team spending an afternoon with a stage magician learns how to hold attention and time a surprise, which is what every launch is trying to do. Because the link isn't obvious, the team has to make it, and competitors can't easily copy the result.

Your competitors are getting the same answers from the same tools. What none of them can download is the snap of a chocolate bar, a beginner's first wave or the reason someone paid to repair a beloved childhood doll. That still takes showing up. So every now and then, close the prompt box, pick a place that has nothing to do with your category, and go see what it can teach you. Your next big idea isn't online yet. Someone is going to find it first.