Creative experiences · the flashbulb test

Will anyone remember this campaign in a month?

Memory is made of senses, emotion, and retelling. Most B2B campaigns have none of the three. Describe yours, rate it on eight dimensions, and get the verdict before the budget ships.

The campaign, in one line
01
Senses
It exists in the physical world — something you can touch, hold, or stand in line for.
02
Emotion
It is built to create one specific feeling — laughter, awe, pride — and we can name it.
03
Public
People can see others experiencing it — it is visible, wearable, or displayable in public.
04
Social currency
Sharing it makes the sharer look good — insider, early, tasteful.
05
Triggers
Something in the buyer's normal week will re-trigger it — it is anchored to a recurring moment.
06
Story
Someone could retell it in one sentence at dinner — it has a name and a plot.
07
Pattern break
It breaks the category's pattern — it looks and sounds nothing like what competitors ship.
08
Keepsake
A piece of it survives the campaign — kept on a desk, a wall, or a camera roll.
1 = not true · 5 = completely true. Be honest; the market will be.
“This campaign” scores
Wallpaper28/100

This will be professionally executed and completely forgotten. That's not a budget problem. Pick the two lowest dimensions below and rebuild the idea around them.

Rebuild around these
Keepsake
Build the artifact that survives the campaign: a custom kit, a tool they reuse, a print worth keeping. Landfill swag erodes; keepsakes compound.
Senses
Give it a body. A coffee truck outside their event beats a banner ad above it. Mail something with weight. Memory starts in the senses.
Public
Make it visible or wearable. Championship belts get displayed on desks for years; plaques go in drawers. If using it can't be seen, nobody copies it.
Built on the Creative Experiences & Memory framework and Jonah Berger’s STEPPS. The receipts live on the campaigns page.
The moves

Nine named mechanisms for creating a moment, from plays that worked. Steal one, combine two, retake the test.

Borrowed stage
Show up where the audience already is, uninvited but welcome. A coffee truck outside the bigger company's event steals the conversation without buying the booth.
Name it like a show
Campaigns with sayable names get retold. "The Banklorette" travels through an office; "Q3 integrated demand campaign" does not.
The artifact
Replace the disposable with the displayable: a championship belt instead of a plaque, a custom build kit instead of a tote bag. Desks are media placements.
Pick a fight
Position against a villain the audience already resents: the legacy way, the bloated suite, the 40-field form. An enemy gives people a side to join.
Customer as hero
Shoot the documentary about them, not the case study about you. People promote stories they star in.
The recurring bit
A running joke or ritual the audience starts expecting: the same gag in every launch video, the annual award only insiders get. Repetition builds the trigger.
Radical generosity
Give away the thing the category gates: real tools, real numbers, the full playbook. Generosity is rare enough to be memorable on its own.
The parody
Take a format everyone knows (a dating show, a movie trailer, an unboxing) and pour your category into it. Familiar shape, surprising contents: that's a flashbulb recipe.
Make it a game
Turn the webinar into a game show, the booth into a challenge, the demo into a tournament. Participation beats attention.
Skeptical this matters? Run the Memory Experiment on yourself. Ready to build? The Campaign Builder. And the everyday surface: the Thousand Gestures Audit.Talk to James →