Deciding what to make your show about is often seen as one of the hardest parts of making a show. But, if you follow these three steps—setting limitations, brainstorming, and upvoting—you'll be well on your way to nailing the perfect idea.

Dave Mizzoni

Nametag dave@2x

Actor & Producer 

Graham Burns & Jackson Cook

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Co-Creative Directors

Jenny Coppola

Nametag jenny@2x

Director of Content and Creative

Liz Cohen

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VP of Development

Patrick Campbell

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Founder & CEO

Dan Mills

Nametag dan@2x

Head of Wistia Studios

Adam Lisagor & Claude Zeins

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Sandwich

Brooke Van Poppelen

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Comic, Writer, Actor

Colin Rosenblum & Samir Chaudry

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Co-Creators

Nate Nichols

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Creative Director

Michelle Khouri

Nametag khouri@2x

CEO & Founder

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Coming Up With Great Ideas Worksheet

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Getting Started with Show Creation

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Your Great Idea


NARRATOR: Once you've got your niche audience figured out, it's time to start hammering out ideas for your show. But coming up with ideas for a must-listen, must-watch series for your business can sometimes feel like this. We get it, and we're here to help you have some seriously aha, light-bulb-above-your-head, came-to-you-in-the-shower style ideas about your brand affinity marketing strategy.

Let's break it down. Coming up with an idea for a show happens through a three-part process-- setting limitations, brainstorming, and uploading. Here's Dave Mizzoni, the comedian and producer behind the series Gayme Show.

DAVE MIZZONI: Creating little boundaries for your creativity is super important. Sometimes when you sit down to write a sample pilot or a writing sample, you just write something from your wildest dreams. And there's no confines at all, and you could just run. And then you sit down to write, and you're like, well, what the hell do I write? Like, it could be literally anything.

JACKSON COOK: If you're just throwing things out there, like, the sky's the limit, you're going to come up with ideas that are not actually feasible or your team can't produce them. So it's good to start with things like what's the budget, who's the target audience for this, to just sort of set the boundaries of where your brain's going to go. And it'll actually become more creatively freeing when you know where you can't go.

GRAHAM BURNS: That's right.

NARRATOR: The best part is that your first limitation is already built in. It's your niche audience.

JENNY COPPOLA: Great. Love to hear it. If you want to build brand affinity, you need to create shows for that audience. And a great way to get started with that is by coming up with potential themes for your show.

NARRATOR: That's Jenny Coppola, director of content and creative here at Wistia.

JENNY COPPOLA: Hey. How's it going? A theme is basically the core message that you know will speak directly to your audience's experience. Try writing a show positioning statement to keep you on track. Something like, we connect with creative marketers who are passionate about building brand affinity, but don't have much experience producing shows, by sharing our experience and the perspectives of industry experts in a fun and entertaining way.

NARRATOR: Another way to come up with a theme is to set a mandate for your content. Here's Liz Cohen, the VP of development at Jax Media, to tell us more.

LIZ COHEN: What is a mandate? I think it's, what is the type of content that you want to put out there that emulates your brand? And for me, if I'm pitching a show, let's say, to Netflix or Amazon or Comedy Central, I need to know their mandate-- what they are looking for. So I think, in turn, whether you're making it yourself or hiring someone to make it for you, make sure your show aligns with your brand, with your message. Is that OK?

NARRATOR: But hands down, the most useful limitation to help you get inspired is picking a format for your show.

PATRICK CAMPBELL: Formats are the structure or the story of your show-- what comes after each piece and, ultimately, what is the message that you're trying to get across. There are lots of different formats. There's makeup tutorials. There's newscasts. There's sportscast. There's topical commentary and documentaries.

NARRATOR: That's Patrick Campbell, CEO of Profitwell.

PATRICK CAMPBELL: Consume as many formats as possible. Watch things that you don't normally watch. Those formats have success baked in and may not have been applied to your industry or your audience. And that doesn't mean they're going to be successful, necessarily, but it kind of hedges your risk in terms of taking something that's out there and applying it to your space.

NARRATOR: Let's take The Price Is Right. The format is a game show where average everyday people compete for prizes to try to guess the price of everyday products. It has recurring games, a charismatic host, and an audience that participates in the show. American Pickers, on the other hand, is a reality TV show about two antique collectors who travel the country in a van in search of their next great find.

On The View, a group of women interview celebrities and discuss current events in a freewheeling roundtable discussion. 60 Minutes also covers current events and features interviews, but it's more of a suit-and-tie kind of thing. Each of these shows has its own repeatable, recognizable, and relatable format, and that's exactly what you'll need to produce shows in a scalable way.

So once you've got a theme and some possible formats, it's time to brainstorm.

DAN MILLS: Oh, man. I love a good brainstorm.

NARRATOR: There's Dan Mills, head of Wistia Studios and leader of literally hundreds of brainstorms.

DAN MILLS: Brainstorms, especially about videos, are super fun-- distractingly fun. But they are work. They are mission critical to getting the job done right. So what I like to do is before a brainstorm meeting, I email my team and say, hey, here's the time we're meeting. Please come prepared to share five ideas. That way, it signals to everyone, yes, this is fun, but this is work-- funny, hysterical, best-part-of-my-day work.

NARRATOR: Yup, brainstorming is work, but it might not look like work.

CLAUDE ZEINS: Adam, feel free to jump in.

ADAM LISAGOR: Yeah. No, I'm not going to.

CLAUDE ZEINS: OK.

ADAM LISAGOR: Do you guys have a chalkboard? Collaborative work is play. When you're at work, you should feel like you have the ability to play, because that's what creativity is.

NARRATOR: So make sure to do your brainstorming in a place that's safe for you and your team to cut loose and share ideas.

BROOKE VAN POPPELEN: I love brainstorming because if it's a good brainstorm, it should be a judgment-free zone. Like, let's get big, and then if we need to bring it back in, we'll do it, but get weird.

NARRATOR: Here's Brooke Van Poppelen, who's been known to brainstorm in writers' rooms at Comedy Central and MTV.

BROOKE VAN POPPELEN: Let's bring out all of the fun-- markers, colored Post-It notes. Let's get some poster board. However crazy you want to get, get into the childhood state of mind of playing, which encourages big ideation.

NARRATOR: But sometimes sharing ideas can be intimidating.

BROOKE VAN POPPELEN: I think a great thing to do is just start sharing bad ideas for fun. Encourage everyone to just blurt out the most ridiculous idea that they can think of. And hilariously, sometimes it might be the idea.

CLAUDE ZEINS: I will throw any idea out there, and 99% of the time, they're bad.

ADAM LISAGOR: [LAUGHS]

CLAUDE ZEINS: Just wanted to see how he'd react to that.

ADAM LISAGOR: [LAUGHS] It's true, but it's also the best part about Claude, because he always finds the brilliant idea. But statistically, he throws out a lot of not-brilliant ideas so that he can get to that brilliant idea. [RINGTONE SOUND]

CLAUDE ZEINS: What did you just do?

[RINGTONE SOUND]

DAVE MIZZONI: It was me.

CREW: [CHUCKLE]

DAVE MIZZONI: It was me. I think also something that's super important is creating a diverse set of voices for you to pull from when you're generating ideas. Things are funny to different people for different reasons. Things are not funny to different people for different reasons. You can go viral for the wrong reasons.

COLIN ROSENBLUM: A great way to start brainstorming is to look at the blogs or the headlines from your industry and see what your niche audience is already talking about and then use those topics as a jumping off point.

SAMIR CHAUDRY: So take some ideas from your theme and punch them into Google search trends, then you can see what's trending alongside your idea.

NATE NICHOLS: If you need a framework for your ideas and building them, mind map. What are descriptive words and adjectives that describe how people feel about your product or service? And those words can help you find different rabbit holes and pockets of concepts.

DAN MILLS: Being able to communicate your idea is as important as coming up with a good idea. So if people in the room aren't understanding what you're saying, try to pull up references, take out your laptop, show Instagram accounts, other videos, pictures to help paint what you're seeing in your head. And on the flip side of that, don't dismiss other people's ideas quickly just because you don't see it. Take out that laptop and walk them through the same process so that you can get on the same page.

NARRATOR: Once you've done some brainstorming, you're ready to upvote the best idea for your show.

MICHELLE KHOURI: OK, so you have all of these amazing ideas and now it's time to pick just one.

NARRATOR: Co-founder of FRQNCY Media Michelle Khouri has helped upvote award-winning ideas for Coca-Cola and Apple.

MICHELLE KHOURI: Now it's time to focus your energy in picking the right one, and you do that by finding the one that meets the intersection points of your goals, what your audience needs to hear, who your audience is, and how they receive information. And then, number five, the biggest one, what is nobody else doing in your genre? Anybody else making shows like yours, you need to stand out.

BROOKE VAN POPPELEN: You know you're cooking with gas, and a good idea is hitting, because everyone is going to start adding on. Yes and-ing, going, oh, and also, what about this? It can sometimes be a light bulb, aha moment.

DAN MILLS: I always vote on the ideas that make sense for us to do. We might come up with incredible amazing ideas in the room, but you want to do the ones that your team can pull off-- the ones that make sense for your business's strategy. Whittle it down to two or three ideas. That is a great starting point to start refining and writing and pitching something you're motivated to work on, but that you also see the end result working.

NARRATOR: So let's recap how you're going to come up with a great idea for your podcast or show. First, set some limitations and pick a theme that will resonate with your niche audience. Next, brainstorm with your team. Be sure to focus on achievable ideas with a repeatable format. Finally, have an honest discussion with the group and pick the idea that naturally rises to the top. Set limitations, brainstorm, and vote for the best idea.

JENNY COPPOLA: Eventually, your brand affinity marketing will include a full slate of video series and podcasts that keep your audience coming back for more. But for now, just focus on that one big idea.

NARRATOR: We want to hear your ideas. Hit us up on Twitter or Instagram with your show ideas and questions, and stay tuned for some more Show Business advice.
