the problem with the big idea

I am certainly not the first, and absolutely not the last person to ask this question. I was thinking about this a bit, mostly in relation to digital branding. Then I also thought about it in relation to digital marketing campaigns.

So, in relation to digital branding, I pretty much reached the conclusion that big idea is not that relevant, although I am sure ton of people will disagree. But I have in mind all those successful brands that care more about being useful and usable and providing delight in small, surprising details (and you know who those brands are!!). They kind of don't have any big idea - or a story - behind them, they just work really really well. Their idea is their execution. End of story :)

Then I started thinking about marketing campaigns and the situation became a bit trickier. After all, people plan a marketing campaigns because they want to draw people's attention to something specific: a new product, or a new positioning of that product, or to promote a line of products, or to get more people to use more products more often. So, if the main purpose is to change people's actions in relation to brand's products, then the best way - agencies thought - is to tell people some awesome story. That is, change of behavior was expected to happen through the change of perception. Totally legit.

Except that digital does not necessarily work that way. There, a change of behavior happens through, well, the change of behavior. Something like moving away the mediator. It's much simpler online: a person does something, gets a feedback, then maybe a trend of those feedbacks, and then after doing stuff that works repeatedly, changes his or her behavior. In this scenario, brand perception is the outcome of positive interactions, and not their cause.

Big ideas, on the other hand, love to command people's attention. They require their own domain on the web, and they rule it (and to avoid any romantic notions, by ruling it I mean mostly practical stuff: not being connected, or referring to, anything or anyone else online; being built from scratch for a gigantic budget; not really being optimized for measurement; etc). And yes, it goes without saying that they expect people to come to them.

In contrast to big ideas model, there's this. It has now almost become a mainstream to think that data and applications and fun stuff live outside the web page, and roam freely on the web (and outside of it, in the physical world -- just ask Russell Davies and Matt Jones). So now the challenge that a marketing campaign has is to build a lot of small fires that people will hopefully interact with. Building a lot of small fires may require a bit more creativity than coming up with one big idea (because, honestly, it is harder to work with what's already out there than to dream up some crazy stuff at the back of the napkin). But, there is also something else. Where the real challenge starts is how to connect all of that stuff together. After all, the task is to build a marketing campaign, and releasing all different things online with a logo on them won't really count as such (just ask the Cannes Lions jury ;).

Ok, now the question is how to integrate all those different and really separate efforts?  Can a big idea unfold over time through a lot of small ideas? Or, should we let go of the question of ideas altogether?

Then, there is a reality check: the client paying for a marketing campaign, used to seeing their brand live as one big idea, is - almost by reflex - going to ask: "Where is my brand here?!?" Well, we have a problem. The brand is all these different things. What you build is going to differentiate one brand from another, the same way that different 30-second spots promoted different moods, jingles, characters, and storylines to make some brand "alive" and different from other similar brands. Or, to put it simply: it's about moving away from telling a story (about the brand) to facilitating a conversation through providing utility.

Second, and more importantly, it's not the brand anymore that connects all these different things into a marketing campaign. Big idea cannot hold things together. But people can. And they are doing so through the flows and patterns of their everyday user behavior. This is easy to say. Not so easy to build for. Because the context of that behavior comes in (as currently much quoted Eliel Saarinen put it, “always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context ...") and that has much less to do with where people are going to see the tool you've built, and much more with their current 'state of mind', motivations, emotions, needs -- the stuff that's a real driver behavioral change. And now, we can't really know someone's state of mind (and old-school marketers didn't know it either, but hey, they didn't let that stop them). What we can know is how they behave online - their usage patterns.

This brings me back to the start (and I can just hope that I didn't build a circular argument here :). And the start was: use people's behavior in order to change it. Don't give people the IDEA of how they should be (look, feel, eat, behave), just let them do stuff that positively change their life. The desired behavior change is much more likely to occur in this second scenario. Something like a video game: people go through their days and they get different tools to do different stuff, and they get some feedback how they performed and how others performed, and that helps them correct their behavior a bit, etc. It had just now occurred to me that Phillipe Stark said something similar in relation to the role of designers, so I managed to dig out his quote: "In the future, there will be no more designers. The designers of the future will be personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant." What he meant here is that the role of designers is to provide tools that improve people's lives.

Um, can the same thing be said about brands? (Just replace designers with brands in the above sentence, and it does not sound so crazy. It actually sounds pretty cool.)

Comments

[Michael Surtees]

You may have considered this but do you make a distinction between digital in the mobile world vs. digital that is on a computer sitting on a table? I know of people that chose their bank depending on which one had the best mobile app.

As for building a lot of little fires, I sort of see this in my own filter as agile. No one knows what's really going to resonate with people until after the fact. Digital isn't analogue so there's a lot more room to explore. Once you see what little fire takes off you put more energy into that element and scale back on others. If none of those fires achieve the desired result, iterate until it does.

[Alan Wolk]

Ana: I think social media made the whole notion of the big idea a bit obsolete. Mostly because too many ad agency created big ideas are exposed as big lies while consumer created ones seem to stick: your big idea is what consumers say it is, not what you want it to be.

Likewise, since social media is such a PR based medium- and because the whole notion of scheduled campaigns no longer makes any sense when people are talking about you all the time-- it seems the most successful advertising is a mix of constant low-level communication-- blog posting, facebook paging, etc.-- mixed in with a series of one-off promotions a la Whopper Sacrifice. So while one keeps a steady flow of conversation going with the consumer, the other builds interest around specific events or promotions. spiking the amount of chatter and awareness from time to time.

Kind of like having the car engine running but stepping on the gas and gunning the engine from time to time.

[Ana Andjelic]

Alan, thanks for your comment. I haven't weighted social media into my argument, but they definitely belong there.

But basically, I think it's similar: either break down the campaign into a number of small things that are continuously released, or just - as you say - participate continuously in the conversations about your brand.

I just find it weird because the industry awards systems are such that they still award a "big idea". It is very hard to evaluate the impact/value of a campaign if it's done as we say. Like, how do you separate there creators from consumers, an initial idea from the conversation about it, it's short-term vs. long-term impact? most campaigns can't be successful within a year, because it just takes time to start a conversation around the brand and/or for people to really adopt the tools that are developed. So while we agree that the big idea is obsolete, it is unfortunately still sought after by clients and the industry. I find that weird.

So, yea, completely agree, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

[Ana Andjelic]

Michael: of course you are correct. I was talking about digital tools in general (mobile, web, etc).

And yep, re: small fires. That's exactly the point. Because no one can predict in advance what's going to work and what is not, the best is just to develop as much things possible, and then actually SEE what works (instead of predicting). But when you have ONE big idea, in most cases, you just gamble: the chances of success border on randomness.

Thanks for your feedback!

[Sriram Venkitachalam]

Comment turned too long. Turned into post. Hope you don't mind. Post url in name. Briefly: I think big ideas are relevant when the brand is a new entrant or looking to enter a new group of people.

[Alan Wolk]

@Sriram: Nice post, agree that new brands should push out the Big Idea about their brand in order to frame what consumers should be thinkng.
One caveat: consumers will ultimately decide if that initial Big Idea is correct and will mold it as per their own experience with the product or service. Brands need to be flexible and willing to adapt their messaging so that it's in line with consumer experience and expectations.

[Matt Daniels]

Just came across the following from the brilliant David Oglivy from "Oglivy on Advertising" book (1983). Might be of interest:

"You can do homework from now until doomsday, but you will never win fame and fortune unless you also invent big ideas. It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night."

"It will help you recognize a big idea if you ask yourself...could it be used for 30 years?"