There's no such thing as a dumb idea

OK, scratch that - there are literally millions of bad ideas out there. In fact, by the time you got to the end of that first sentence, someone you know will have had one - hey, it may well have even been you.

When you find yourself in a creative environment such as the one we have here at Merchandise Mania, you're often treated to a nugget of pure genius - an idea so incredibly "left of field" that you'd think it would have come from the mind of Stephen Hawking after a heavy night on Vodka, Red Bull and class A narcotics.

An example? As I write this my colleague has been asked to come up with ideas for a Moroccan themed evening. Now when we get given a brief here we brainstorm and I am proud to say that the newest member of our team came up with an idea of pure gold. Are you ready? I hope you're sitting down........

Cous Cous shaped stress toys! No, you're not dreaming this, this actually happened and the resulting laughter in the office has lifted the mood for the rest of the day. Let's be fair, if you want cous cous shaped stress toys you need two ingredients - a stress ball (round will do but if you can't find that at your local supermarket then any shape will suffice) and a cheese grater. Apply the ball to the grater and repeat until you have enough cous cous to accompany a mid sized chicken shish.

OK, enough messing around - is there really a point to all of this? Well I'm delighted that after only 3 entries you think that I need to be making a point. What happened next was that the resultant laughter was so loud that other people wanted to know what the joke was. We shared it and within 10 minutes my colleague (the one who got the brief in the first place) had a list of relevant and less than ridiculous ideas to present to her client.

Be fair, there are plenty of very successful products out there that began as crazy ideas. At some point in history, some TV executive thought it would be great to fit a bunch of social misfits in a house and film every little petty discussion that came up. They called it Parliament TV and it didn't do too badly.

Some people go for weird combinations as a good idea. A few weeks ago I saw Marmite Guinness in the shops. Right, so some bright spark thought "People like Marmite...people like Guinness....hold on a second!" NO NO and thrice NO! I like curry and I love cheesecake but I can assure you that a Sara Lee Tikka Cheesecake is never going to make it into my fridge.

Like any progressive company, Merchandise Mania is a melting pot of ideas, most good, some bad and some which get written down in a very special book which we refer to whenever we need an emotional boost. The real beauty comes in realising how much we love what we do here. As I've said before, I'm fine with providing pens and mugs and mousemats to people if that's what they want, but I'd much rather wake up in the morning and wonder what crazy idea is going to pop into my brain that day.

Sometimes we don't even need a brief. Right now we're sitting on loads of great products which would be right for you so the next time you get an email from us with the subject "I saw this and thought of you", we really did think of you. Open it, take a look - if you don't find it relevant it will have cost you twenty seconds. If you don't open it at all, it may well cost you thousands of pounds in lost potential revenue.

So this week, a challenge - not for you but for me. Let me know where you are struggling; where your creative juices have temporarily dried up, and let me and my team help you. I promise you we'll come up with something memorable together and at the very least, you'll have a fun story to share with your colleagues.

Have a good week.

For more stress toy recipes log on to www.tastystresstoys.com/areyoumental?