As someone with a background in and love for advertising, I have always been a fan of the “big idea.” The idea and process of coming up with one driving concept for a campaign has always fascinated me. Having been involved in this process on numerous occasions I can honestly say that it is increasingly difficult to come up with one breakthrough idea that will both be unique enough to get an increasingly A.D.D. audience’s attention but also drive home a message that will make them act. Nearly impossible any more.

Even though I have always coveted the big idea, I have to say that I’m not sure if it’s on the pedestal it once was, particularly for the client that has an advertising budget that isn’t in the millions. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of advertising agencies and design firms creating marketing that seemingly attempts to capture that big idea, but fails miserably. Radio ads are the worst, but I’ve seen my fair share of print, online and TV ads that are the same way.  It’s puzzling, frankly. By trying to capture that one big idea, the message is lost entirely. The bottom line is firms must not sacrifice effectiveness for creativity.

From Agency Spy, here is a perfect example of a company (Honda) working on a big idea that is extremely slow to develop. I just don’t really think any potential Honda buyer is going to take the time to watch this concept come to fruition. Sure, it might generate some Web traffic-I even went to the site. Once and only once. And on top of it all, I really don’t know what it has to do with selling cars….

Garret Ohm
http://www.orange-element.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Blog Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.