the tyranny of the big idea

               

       

I was at a conference a few months ago and ended up using the phrase ‘the tyranny of the big idea’ in response to a question, without really knowing what I meant.

(I do that a lot, blurt something out and then work out what I mean later.)

But it crystalised something that’s been at back of my mind for a while and recently, I’ve been thinking about it, and talking about it with various people, and have realised that other people are thinking along similar lines. So I've decided to try and tease out what I mean (this is just thinking in progress):

These days, a brand’s first job is to be interesting. And being interesting for most brands, most of the time means new ideas, new things to say, new ways to say it. (There is an alternative ‘slow brand’ model but we’ll come to that another time.)

Big ideas militate against that. Big ideas tend to stop you having new ideas.

But to think about that we maybe need to establish a relative scale of ideas.

Let’s say this:

• The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the size of Saturn.
• Sergeant Pepper is the size of the moon
• The Sony Walkman is the size of Japan
• Just Do It is the size of Beaverton, Oregon
• The average marketing Big Idea, presented in a pitch, is the size of a car park
• ‘Crumbelievable’ is the size of some cheese

And now let’s examine the characteristics of the Average Marketing Big Idea versus something like Just Do It. Or The Power of Dreams.

The Average Marketing Big Idea is big enough to give you a year or so of OK communications. It’s normally summed up in a tagline and some kind of visual consistency. It’s simple and clear. It’s useful because it lets you integrate all kinds of stuff, from all kinds of suppliers and it’s explicable to the salesforce

If it’s halfway decent consumers can be made to play it back and explain it in qualitative research (once you’ve beaten them over the head with enough focus group stimulus) and they will recall it in your tracking (once you’ve beaten them over the head with enough media exposure). It may or may not increase sales.

So far, so OK.

The downside – ideas of this size are hard to come by. They’re not exactly hard to come up with but they’re hard to get approved, hard to implement, hard to measure. They’re so specific that they’re always wrong somehow and they always piss someone off, so there’s always some politics involved somewhere.

Therefore, once they’re up and running, once the sales meetings have been had, the ads have been made, the three-ring binders have been issued people are incredibly reluctant to give them up. Which means the new ideas which are central to interestingness fall by the wayside because they don’t fit in the confines of the Big Idea. And the brand bores people with its consistency. (Though that’s much less likely to turn up in conventional tracking.)

               

       

Now, let’s examine an idea the size and value of The Power Of Dreams or Just Do It.

First, the words don’t matter much. Just Do It is a brilliant memorable phrase which comes out of real language and that’s great, so it’s a good tagline, but that’s not the important thing. The Power Of Dreams is not a good line (there’s not a lot of poetry or memorability) but it’s still incredibly useful.

Because these things aren’t really Big Ideas, they’re just huge buckets to contain a whole bunch of small ideas. And small ideas are what makes a brand interesting and effective. A constant series of small, new, interesting vaguely-related ideas which move things on, which explore the edges of the brand, which renew the relationships with customers, employees etc.

I can’t quite think of the right analogy for how this works. John Grant is definitely there by combining the idea of brands as a cluster of ideas with an imperative to innovate but his molecular analogy doesn't quite convey the sense of direction and movement. A molecule looks too static, you don't get the sense of new ideas being added at the front and old ones being discarded out the back. That being said I can't think of anything better. Anyone got anything?

(By the way, this reminds me that I haven't written about John's new book yet, which is brilliant. I will try and get around to it shortly, but you should really just buy it and read it for yourself. And I'll add it to the library. Now, that I think about it, it's entirely possible that I'm just recycling John's ideas here, sorry John.)

The thing that make these idea buckets work is the precise opposite of what people usually look for in Big Ideas. They’re vague - which means they can accommodate all sorts of other, often contradictory thoughts. The vagueness means they’re hard to codify, which means they exist in conversation, images and bits of film, which lends itself to idea creation, and which means they’re hard to smelt down into an ordinary Big Idea. They’re often emergent – no-one sits down and creates them as the future of the company, because that’s impossible. They grow out of philosophy, sometimes via advertising, sometimes as other things, but they’re adopted and emerge as an expression of the idea bucket rather than imposed as such.

And, back to my original point about these kinds of ideas, the words don’t matter much. This isn’t about phrase-making. It’s not about the actual words, it’s the bundle of ideas, activities, history, products, people, attitudes, emotions, habits that the words represent. You can take the words away and the bundle still remains, having words is just a convenient heuristic for everyone.

               

                    

So, if you buy this and you want to get yourself one of these bigger things that we shouldn’t call Big Ideas. How might you do it?

1.    Starting doing stuff. Start executing things which seem right. Do it quickly and do it often. Don’t cling onto anything, good or bad. Don’t repeat much. Take what was good and do it differently.

2.    Look for the patterns that emerge. Look for the phrases that people use to describe what you/they are doing. Collect the things that seem to work as summaries. Notice them, put them in a drawer, don’t turn them into CI guidelines.

3.    Try not to write too much down. Manage the brand through conversation and impressionistic media – videos, stories, images, heroes. Not through mandates, best practise or benchmarking.

4.    Don’t be media neutral. Favour the things that are rich with experience and texture - events, retail, social media, film. And relegate the things that are thin and specific. Because the rich stuff is more likely to help you move forward.

5.    And something else and something else.

Er, that’s it for now. I think there’s something in this and I’ve not quite got there yet, but I thought I’d think out loud for a bit. That's why I write blogs not books, I can't do that sustained thinking.

And, since I've always been a fan of Grant's notes at the end of his posts, here are some notes, kind of:

a) I’m not planning to talk about Nike much, I don’t think that’s right, but this time Just Do It was the most apt analogy. It's not like I'm giving anything away.

b) Full credit must go to Joey Headset for uploading Crumbelievable. Though I first heard about it on the splendid American Copywriter, I just can't track down which episode.

c) I've been meaning to write about this for ages, but it was Leland's really good thinking that got me off my arse to add my two cents. (see how transatlantic I am with my colloquialisms)

d) All credit in the world to Spell With Flickr.

e) As you can probably tell, I've yet to get any work.

               

Comments

[carol]

I've always thought you were the essence of what is good about being transatlantic. I'll bet you say "madder" for matter some days...however, arse, not a commonly used word in the States. Just saying.

[russell]

Maybe I meant 'mid-atlantic' - arse and cents in the same sentence. It seems natural to me, but odd to many.

[Richard Hayter]

This reads like some meat for your 'polyphonic brand' idea. Each smaller idea, each bassline, melody etc adds up to a cohesive whole. Looks and sounds like a big thing, but is actually composed of small things which still mean something on their own.

[carol]

Oh, I get it!

That's actually hard to do, I've racked my brain trying to come up with a witty answer that's in the same ballpark, keeping faffing around with silly expressions like "takes the biscuit". G2G, C.

[Charles Frithq]

Not terribly radical but a possible biological analogy for the brand dynamism gig, could be the plain old 'Cell Cycle'.

New cells are created through cell division, and eventually die off through either damaged DNA (flawed brand architecture?) or old age. The 'off-brand' whistle often blows out interesting work prematurely. Very enjoyable post in any case.

[Dino]

I like the idea of a "sense of direction and movement" to brand clusters. It helps to remind me that brands really are a lot like other cultural things and movements, in how they are formed and adapt (yet remain the same, or "coherent" as John would put it, I think) to changes in culture at large.

They have to appeal to something deep and universal, yet be pretty specific to make a difference, have a timeless quality yet be able to be subtly morph as culture changes. In that sense, the idea of direction and movement is right on the mark, particularly since, unlike some cultural movements they have the ability to (partly, a bit less now) determine the direction via their communications, innovation etc.

Very rough analogy: the very best brands are a bit like musical movements, or even successful bands; a nike or apple is a bit like "jazz" or "rock". (It's just rough, obviously there are way more brands than the handful of genres). These broad genres are made of various influences and threads. As you suggest, they attach molecules at the front and leave other ones behind (language, imagery, ideas or even instruments).

"Big Ideas" are the smaller, faddier movements that are much more narrow and conservative. More temporal and fixed by definition. In music there is a reason why they're called one hit wonders.

The larger movements are broad enough, in terms of their influences and inputs, that they continually absorb and "progress" in a way (damn it's hard not to use "evolve").

To what extent they remain the "same" in essence is not the important part, though it is the thing that most often becomes debated by purists vs. new fans etc. What matters is that the genre, or movement comes to mean different things to different people. In order for it to remain in currency, it continually morphs yet remains the same, by maintaining a credible and authentic link to its origin (which often becomes a myth), and also staying current.

The minute cultural things like brands becomes too codified ("big idea"), when there is a canon that must be adhered to, it can quickly become stale and irrelevant.

[Servant of Chaos]

Just Do It also has a strength in its role as a guiding strategic principle. It actually helps the business make decisions about new ventures, approaches and so on. It turns strategy into action, makes it an imperative for success. When marketing and business strategy cross over you know you are onto a winning formula.

[Casper]

An alternative to the “Cluster/Molecular”, ”Polyphonic”, “Cell Cycle” and “Musical Movement” analogies for having a clear sense of direction and movement for a brand could be:

A newspapers “editorial line” (the one’s that have one).

It basically contain lot’s of small opinionated ideas on the world around us – constantly changing its discourse with the surroundings and developments in society. In the best examples you are constantly surprised and enthused even though you know which direction these small ideas go.

[mark]

Great post - it provoked my gray cells into not thinking about football :).

Based on what you are saying, perhaps we need to start articulating brand philosophies rather than brand ideas. The specifity of the idea may lead to the kind of "brand tyranny" that prevents expansive thinking. or alternatively, maybe we need find ways to treat our brand ideas like briefs - a jumping off point.

You make also make a good point about big(er) brand ideas growing out of a philosophy or culture of a company. To me that's because those ideas will always be executed on at all levels of the company and are harder to copy - they go to the pure nature of that group of poeple and how they act. Changing how you execute is easier in that environment because everyone (presumably) buys into what the company is about. I am not sure if Nike was characterized by a "just do it" culture before the phrase was invented - perhaps you could tell us (it seems that Honda fit that bill)?

My only question is, what happens when you don't have a culture that drives you to a particular idea bucket. In those situations, if we have an evolving idea, or a loosely defined one, is it harder to get everyone in the company to behave in a way that supports the bucket? Or do you just have to put more emphasis on training people outside of marketing on what the idea getting people to think and behave around that idea?

Also, is what you say applicable to all brands/ideas? Maybe there are brands that need to be anchors or more static, and some that need to be more dynamic.

[joey headset]

Hey, thanks for the link! I don't know from Big Ideas or Small Ideas, or even Vaguely Cheese Shaped Ideas... but this seems like a way of looking at a certain kind of marketing-type-thingy.

[jason]

Loved the post. But I had some of the same questions as Mark asks in his comment about if it's more true of certain types of brands than others. I work across a few brands ranging from huge & global to small & local. Executing many small ideas, looking for patterns, and striving for continuous interestingness makes a ton of sense for brands that do lots of communications, have a large portfolio of products to support, and/or that work across many global regions. But are the implications the same for smaller brands/smaller budgets/smaller markets?

In my experience with smaller brands, executing many ideas is not always possible - over a whole year you might get two or three pieces of communication. And because there are fewer bits of communication made, a lot more is riding on each one. So they often do need a "big idea" to help them differentiate against bigger players, to tie the few meagre bits of communication together so they are somehow related, and to help things work a bit better together than they would seperately. It presents less risk of boring people with consistency because the brand doesn't have that big a presence.

So is consistency a better idea for small brands than big? Is consistency without scale less boring? Put another way, can a brand's meaning be emergent without scale? It's one thing to be emergent across 20 bits of communication, but does it work if you only do 2 or 3?

I guess what that all comes down to is: are big ideas good for small brands, and small ideas good for big brands? That would be ironic, wouldn't it?

[russell]

These are good questions and I need to think a bit to have good answers but in the spirit of blogging I'm just going to blirt stuff out and see what happens.

1. The point of lots of small ideas rather than one big one is not to have lots of small ideas. That's not the goal. The goal is to be interesting. To be relevant, to be fascinating, to be ahead of your customers all that. And the reason it's called the tyranny of the big idea is that I think what we usually call Big Ideas tend to militate against that kind of flexibility, creativity, innovation.

So I guess the answer on a small brand is - what do you need to do to stay interesting. Sure, you may be doing less stuff but you can still make sure that that less stuff is overpacked with richness and reward. Most brands stretch their ideas to far - they make a 3 month idea into a 12 month idea. If you're a smaller brand you just scale that model down. Or up. Or something.

2. I think there probably is a model that you might call 'slow branding' which isn't neccesarily about constant innovation - it's actually about staying exactly what you are and never really changing. Because there are some brands you don't want to change. Lyle's Golden Syrup. Camper shoes. And I might put Innocent drinks in there.

You don't want these brands to move far from their core competency, and they don't have to constantly bewitching you with their fancy new ideas. You just want them to be your friends. They have to be honest, stable, warm, friendly. They have to do what they do but do it with charm and fun, every now and then tickling you with a little tweak of an idea but not suddenly changing direction.

Or something.

Like I said, I'm blirting. Making any sense?

[Emily]

For some reason, the image that pops into my mind is a connect-the-dots picture. Where at the end you pull back and have created a big image.

Except, of course, each dot would have to be it's own little really interesting picture, but let's just agree to ignore that bit.

[Jeff Gill]

I came across this article today, thanks to Mark McGuinness (wishfulthinking.com). It set my brain to whirring as I thought about it in context of what I do as part of the leadership team of a brand new church. Thanks!

[Dave Martin]

Bravos, Russell. Great post. May I suggest you read marketing maven Tom Asacker. Get started http://tinyurl.com/5tk22g
and http://tinyurl.com/6lh26m