There are times where you can find great marketing ideas from places outside the box and from your day to day life.  One example is described in this blog entry.   The article talks about how a company executive kept getting responses from friends like “anything” or “whatever” in response to questions asking what they wanted to drink.  This inspired him to market drinks in cans with the brand names Anything and Whatever.  The hook is, like Bernie Bott’s Any Flavor Beans in the Harry Potter series, each can contains one of six possible flavors, so that the purchaser never knows which of the six he or she will be getting.  According to the piece, the product has been very successful

This illustrates two points.  One, being unconventional can yield exceptional results.  People will react to something that is unique and unexpected, many times just because it is not like everything else.  Secondly, new ideas can come from anywhere.  While market research can yield information you can use, sometimes the best ideas come from everyday life.