What's the BIG IDEA Part 2
Thursday, February 9, 2023
by: Mara Dickson

Section: Newsletter Articles




In last month’s Marketing Minute Blog, I introduced the idea of creating your company’s BIG IDEA, the “hook” that aids in recall of your company or offering’s main benefit and helps your audience remember, share, and act upon seeing your campaign. I went into detail about some successful and failed campaigns and explained (with some pretty interesting examples) how important it is to make sure to include both a variety of company stakeholders as well as members of your target audience in your discussions when considering implementing a BIG IDEA for your marketing plan. Check it out first here, and then read further to learn HOW!
 
The BIG IDEA – How Tos!
So… the BIG IDEA…

Once you have assembled your fully representative brainstorming team (remember last month’s blog post), make sure you:

1. Clearly outline what you are looking to achieve.
a. Are your goals long term or are you more focussed on short term objectives,
b. Are you interested more in customer prospecting or on retention and loyalty, etc., and
c. Who is your audience, what do they like and dislike, what motivates them, and can you identify any lifestyle markers.

2. Uncover a compelling insight, a truth/customer problem to solve. This often involves research
into target audience (who is your customer, how do they go from awareness to purchase, what do
they want/need to see) AND insights into the overall product category, including competition, assumptions, etc.
I am not alone in considering this a great print AD demonstrating what understanding of customer pain points can look like, and how Rolls-Royce (well, Ogilvy) did it well!

That tagline: “At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

Great, huh?

Just imagine how luxurious this would have seemed for customers in 1958!

Once you know your goal and your customer and have uncovered your compelling insight, you:

3. Find the brand connection – what triggers YOUR customers’ journey and how you will attract their interest. Ask yourself:
a. Does your idea capture people’s attention?
b. Is your solution unique in any way, or can you make it unique?
c. How does your product offer solutions to challenge your target’s problem?
 
Do you remember the Snickers tagline, “You are not you when you are hungry”? Since 2010, this has been INCREDIBLY successful for demonstrating the impact of understanding customer motivation. With memorable TV ads featuring Betty White, Joe Pesci, Don Rickles, Mr. Bean, Danny Trejo, Robin Williams, Willem Dafoe, and Aretha Franklin, these celebs have all contributed to the message of you are not you/you get a little angry/turn into a diva/get a little loopy/aggressive/impatient, etc. when you are hungry!

How do we know it was successful? Even people OUTSIDE of the company started to create content promoting the brand! So Great!

OK… so we know our goals, what gets our customer ready to buy, and our brand connection. What is next? It’s time to:

4. Clearly articulate the idea:
a. Name the program
b. Describe the idea and how it will be delivered
c. What is the role of your brand
d. For each medium, how will the message be communicated.

If you cannot, then the idea needs refinement or to be scrapped entirely.

This ad concept gets the award for longevity – for the agency partnership AND the campaign’s BIG IDEA! David Ogilvy recounts that, in looking for a way to position Dove as much better than soap, he was reading through the ingredients list and the idea for the “¼ moisturizing cream”, was born! The “won’t dry your skin like ordinary soap” slogan, along with the image of pouring rich cream into the bar, has stuck with Dove Beauty Bar since 1957.

5. Plan for execution and evaluation – consider how success will be recognized and measured, referring back to stage one (1) where you outlined what you were hoping to achieve, and then DO IT! Execute and evaluate. Then begin again. Some BIG IDEAS have to be changed or adjusted, some have to be scrapped, and some, like our Dove example, can work for DECADES!

While it may not be a straightforward process and may involve multiple stages, many people, and quite a bit of time, investing time and effort in developing your BIG IDEA enables the development of a campaign with a clear creative focus that is much more likely to impact your audience and drive results. When you can use your BIG IDEA to create your hashtags, your soundbites, and your creative, what you have is great marketing!

Please be sure to @-mention Leigha, AHTD, and me, and use our community hashtags on your social media posts to make it easy for the leaders in industrial automation to participate in the conversation and harness the power of AHTD!

We are #doinghightechbetter, together!