Big Idea!

Big Idea of the Day

Really Big Ideas Usually Have Insight. Sell. Twist.

Big Idea?

Similar Ideas, Different Products

Why are big ideas important again?

Clutter “As a society, we are just trying to survive an epidemic called time starvation. 95% of advertising content produced by brands goes unnoticed by consumers. That’s because we’re creating as much content every month as we did in the first 2000 years of civilized existence.” Zain Raf, CEO Hyper Marketing

Forrester Research—Digital Clutter “With all this additional clutter, just a handful of brands will be conversational winners. We can only have so many relationships”

Step 1--Strategy

Strategy: A word of military origin, refers to a plan of action to achieve a particular goal Creating an Advertising Strategy

My Favorite Strategy Quote “Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it's about deliberately choosing to be different.” Michael Porter, Harvard Business School

Homework

Hard Work

Intense All the work you do for all your classes now Double it Focused on your brand (every day) Two weeks off vs. four months You’ll take one

Exciting You’ll learn things you never knew You’ll have more fun than you ever imagined You will grow You will become renaissance men and women (no shit)

Wouldn’t it suck… If you did all that and… Your strategy was boring? Your strategy didn’t break new ground Your strategy didn’t make creative people say: “I’m so excited to work with this brief!”

Odds Are That Will Happen

Unless You Join Me!

Our Pledge Repeat after me: I will never, ever write a crappy brief I will never, ever let my competition outwork me …outthink me …outinspire me

And I always will be I am the Shit!

Tip # 1 Imagine (always) that you are the creative receiving this brief. Does it help or hinder? Is it boring or exciting? Is it clear or muddy? Single-minded or complicated?

Tip #2 “Complexity is the enemy of great advertising”

Tip #3 Simplicity comes from complexity (weird huh?) Simplicity that does not is ignorance simple-mindedness or just stupidity)

Hunting and gathering

Building Haystacks/Finding Needles

Complexity Transformation Device

Our next month in a …

Core Questions How will your product stand out in the marketplace? Why should consumers choose it instead of a competing brand? Do you know a secret about your buyers that the competition doesn’t?

Page 12 “You can’t locate your target market until you know what you’re selling exactly, but you can’t know what exactly you ought to promise until you locate a target market and decipher its needs. Nor can you create an effective strategy until you analyze the marketplace positions your client’s competitors occupy and successfully differentiate your client’s product from theirs.”

We are going to know everything there is to know about The Product The Consumer The Marketplace

And I mean everything!

Investigate the Product

Sometimes a simple answer

McCann

Step One: The Product

Homework Due Next Class Two-page typed summary of everything you can learn about WD-40 (Bullets are OK)

How to Learn Find out what’s in it, how it works, what it does Call the number Surf the Web Ask local dealers, merchants (go to a hardware store) Find out what people think (talk to some hard core users; what are people saying online?) Learn who its competitors are and what they do (think broadly about this one) Visit the factory!

Questions to ask What is its greatest strength? What do people have against it? Why is this more than a commodity? Who are the competitors, exactly? How does it fit into people’s lives (when do they use it)? What are the end benefits?

Product as Hero

Sometimes what it can’t do underlines what it can do

Old and effective

Mini

Only Your Homework Will Tell You What Can The Product Do?

Who am I?

Cliff Freeman “In the greatest, soundest, most creative advertising, the theater revolves around the product… Advertising that isn’t really about the product is almost always self indulgent crap.”

Papa John’s

Let’s give these guys some big ideas

Steps Product insights/competition Target/target insight? Sell (proposition)?

What’s wrong with this proposition? “64 calories of crisp, refreshing beer with a lemonade twist”

Key Step Creative Twist