This is how we co-create everything with our clients. And how you can too.
Public affairs pros, communicators and marketers are brilliant people with no shortage of good ideas. But having a great idea in isolation isn't enough — most of the time, you need to bring others along on the journey to build and execute something that actually solves the problem. Colleagues of different seniority and specialism, competitors in the same industry, NGO partners: all of them bring a useful perspective, and all of them make alignment harder.
After co-creating this way with nearly 40 clients over three years, we turned what we learned into the Idea Sprint — a clear framework for bringing people together to build great ideas. We use some version of it for every client collaboration we take on, and we'd encourage you to steal it too.
The roles in a Bump Idea Sprint
Shepherds the process from start to finish. Usually someone from Bump, though it works just as well run in-house.
The lead strategist plus one to three people from the organisation that will roll out the idea — typically senior communicators, marketers or public affairs leads.
The wider group of stakeholders whose buy-in you need to co-create and sign off the winning idea. Cap it around ten people — fewer is better.
Brought in to visualise ideas — graphic or spatial designers depending on the format, and a videographer when an MVP video helps show what a bigger campaign could look like.
We use some version of this for every client collaboration
Find the right way to get face time with your committee. Ask a few leading questions, but mostly just listen. We like sending a short survey first to get a baseline, then following up with individual calls to let people elaborate.
Synthesise what you heard into a strategy, playing back a few options rather than a single answer — "3 of 5 people said X, 1 said Y, 1 said neither." Layer in audience insight, even if your audience is niche and the research is thin — be honest about how much you can actually know.
Combine the strategy options with the audience insight into one top-line message per option: the single sentence you'd say to your audience to tell them what you want them to do, and why.
Take each top-line message and think through tactical ways to bring it to life. A few prompts that tend to get a room moving — take your message and ask how you'd:
Build a long list with your core team, then narrow it down and visualise the strongest few.
Bring the committee back together — block at least an hour, two if you can give the process room — and walk them through how you got here, step by step. If you listened well, every member should recognise their own thinking in what you're showing: these are already their ideas.
Use the session to narrow the field, discarding a few ideas and combining others. Get the concept to about 85%, then come back once more for feedback on the remaining 15%.
Get granular on tactics and timing. Lock in the plan — leaving a small margin for a late committee member's eleventh-hour concern — and start building.
We've run the whole process in about two weeks when we needed to, and speed helps keep momentum. Realistically, budget three to six weeks. Stall much longer than that and the group starts to lose focus, and second-guess decisions they'd already made.
Read more about pricing, and everything else it's like to work with us, on the Working with Bump page →