What's The Big Idea?

Last week I attended a conference in the UK called Media 360 which gathered together some of the biggest and brightest marketers, advertising and digital agencies, media buyers and media owners ranging from companies such as Unilever, P & G, Barclays, Channel 4 through to Olgivy, Clearchannel, Microsoft, Yahoo and Vodafone.

A key point of discussion and debate was about marketing in today's world. One of the key themes that came up a number of times was the essential aspect of creating a Big Idea or Big Ideal to base your campaign around. Alan Rutherford, VP of Global Media for Unilever, summed it up well by outlining a four stage process...

1. Put the consumer first - understand the psychology and sociology of your audience.
2. Engage with key cultural trends.
3. Create talkability.
4. Do the numbers last.

As an example see the video below for an amazing campaign that was put together for Lynx in Australia and New Zealand.

The insight behind the campaign was that Unilever discovered and tapped into the fact that Lynx's target audience in Oz and Nz (18-21 year old guys) started to think that air travel and the planning of their first overseas trip on their own was a very aspirational goal.

The insight resulted in a Big Idea which was driven through 32 different channels in an example of true 360 degree integration...see the video below. The sales impact off the back of the campaign was unprecedented.

Obviously our artists aren't brands like Lynx, but to what extent do we need to start thinking in this way?

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