Why Your Best Ideas Still Aren't Landing (& How AI Can Help)

By Dan Sanchez · Episode published

A practical five-part framework for making good marketing ideas easier to understand and share: name the idea, explain it briefly and deeply, add a story, and make it visual.

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The best idea in the room does not automatically become the idea people remember or share. Five packaging elements help an idea move out of a private document and into the minds of other people.

The first lesson is uncomfortable because it is easy to blame an audience for missing a good idea. Sometimes the idea is strong, but it is sitting in a Google Doc, Evernote, or Notion without the packaging that helps another person recognize it, remember it, and pass it along.

Start with a name

An idea needs a name before people can refer to it. A name gives colleagues a handle for the concept. It turns “that thing we talked about” into something people can activate and share.

Good naming balances clarity and memorability. Clarity comes first, especially when you are still learning. I recommend developing the naming skill deliberately, and I point to Alexandra Watkins’s Hello, My Name Is Awesome as a useful resource. One repeatable exercise from the book is to find important words in the idea, look for rhymes, and test combinations that create a memorable reference without losing the meaning.

Add short and long explanations

The second element is a short description. If you cannot explain the idea in a few sentences, it is hard for anyone else to understand what it is or why it matters. This is a place where AI can help. You can give ChatGPT a rough explanation and ask for a concise elevator pitch, then test and refine the result with real people.

The third element is a long description. This is not a book. It is closer to a useful blog post that covers who, what, when, where, why, and how. The short description helps someone decide whether to lean in. The long description gives them enough context to understand the idea and use it.

Make the idea stick

The fourth element is a story or metaphor. Logic can make an idea clear, but a story can make it memorable. A case study, a small example, or a metaphor can give an abstract idea a shape that people can carry with them.

We used artificial intelligence as an example. The phrase itself works as a metaphor that helped people imagine a machine with human-like intelligence. Before that language caught on, related work was described with terms such as automation, cybernetics, and thinking machines. The metaphor gave people a way to picture the field and lean in.

The fifth element is a simple visual. It might be a diagram, sketch, icon, or graphic. A visual should explain one idea quickly. If it takes a whole chapter to understand the diagram, it has defeated its purpose. Keep it simple, and use multiple visuals when one image is trying to explain too many things.

AI can be a helpful visual partner, especially when you are not a designer. Ask it for several ways to represent the idea, develop prompts from the strongest concepts, and choose the visual that communicates most clearly. The tools can help with a first pass, while a designer may still be useful when a whole set needs a consistent system.

Do the considerate work

Packaging is not empty promotion. If an idea is useful, making it easier to understand and share is considerate. The idea is only as good as its ability to be understood.

Document each idea in a Google Doc, Notion document, project, or other durable library. Once the name, descriptions, story, and visual are defined, AI can use that context to help repurpose the idea without making you explain it from scratch every time. The extra work gives the idea a better chance to be received, carried, and shared.