In my career I cannot count the times that an agency brought in a storyboard with a big idea in it, but buried somewhere, or possibly as a non-associated tag line.
Your job as a client is to FIND THE BIG IDEA even if they don’t. Believe it or not, it is easier to see when you are not the creator or the writer.
I just watched a Playtex commercial for a new bra (don’t remember the name) that seemed to be about “no more side seams.” I could not tell whether this new product was about the look or the comfort, but let’s assume that it is about both looks and comfort.
One of the models happened to say something in the last frame that I suspect is a huge idea if they built the new brand around this dual differentiation, “looks good, feels even better.” I don’t believe that this was just a good line. I believe this is a potential big idea.
She looked down at her own breasts and said, “When the girls are happy, I’m happy.”
Now imagine that this new Brand of bra was called, “Happy Girls, or Happy Happy,” something that linked. “They look good. They feel even better. When the girls are happy, I’m happy.”
That’s why you’re the master, Frank. You nailed that one out of the park. My question is – why don’t these big brands “get it”? With all of the research capital they have, do they not place any emphasis on creating a Killer Brand? It seems only the up and comers really get it, only to be bought out by a big brand which either gets it and runs with it for years or completely dilutes it rather quickly.
Scott, I am sad to say that in my 25 years as a consultant, there seems to be more brand “stewardship” at the corporate level than there is brand building. I think it has to do with Risk orientation. The average entrepreneur is “risk” receptive or he/she would not be an entrepreneur. The average corporate brand entrepreneur is “risk” adverse.
Long gone are the days when “risk” receptive individuals went into corporate life at least in marketing.
Over the last twenty years, in my opinion, two many of our truly hungry risk oriented creative-minded workers have chosen to go into finance where they could make a hundred million before they were thirty. And some of that creativity and innovation and risk has come back and bitten our economy in the butt now.
OiYprC Good point. I hadn’t thought about it quite that way.