“This European Whiskas campaign is an excellent example of a disruptive approach for a brand that exists in a market driven by conventions,” says Stefan Schmidt, Creative at Large Europe at TBWA.

Many translate the insight that “people love cats” into conventional advertising featuring cute cats only. But cat-lovers understand that their appreciation of cats is something very individual: it’s all about THEIR cat. Executed in a simple and beautiful way, the campaign will create an iconic landmark for the brand and leaves plenty of space for cat-owners to project their unique relationship with their pet.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.

 1.  It’s More Important To Have A Point Of View Than A Line. 

Activities thrive better than ads in the new media landscape.  So the most useful Big Idea is a point of view than can inspire activities.  John Grant refers to this as a Marketing Enthusiasm: a point of view on the world that is bigger than the brand or the product.  Persil’s ‘Dirt Is Good’ is more than an eye-catching line.   It is a marvelously rich point of view about how children develop through play.  For example, its website currently promotes a list of 33 things to do before you’re ten.  Contrast this with Samsung’s alleged Big Idea: ‘Imagine’.  There’s no point of view there, nothing to engage with. So ‘Imagine’ ends up shoehorned in as the opening to its line of copy.  Russell Davies nicely mocked what happens to meaningless Big Ideas online:   “It was OK when a Big Idea had to support three TV scripts and some posters, but its flatness shows when the poor digital agency has to turn it into an immersive, online experience, not just a silly game of whack-a-mole with the brand mascot.”  

2.  A Big Idea Cannot Depend On A Line

This seals the deal for me.  The real growth media of recent years – music festivals, mobile phones and Facebook applications – don’t have room for them.  The fragmentation of media and the shift to global marketing means that Translation, whether in to different channels or different languages, is the priority. 

3. One Big Idea Doesn’t Mean One Big Execution.  

Historically Big Ideas came in the form of big executions. I first encountered The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Orange through an epic cinema commercial.  I thought it was dazzling at the time; I suspect I would find it indulgent today.  The best way to manifest a Big Idea today is through a whole bunch of activity.  The same positioning could inspire a series of ‘marketing molecules’ that make the most of the media and the audience.  No one molecule is the high point of the brand; all contribute to it.  Nike is the brand of Joga Bonito, 10K and Supersonic.  Top Shop is the brand of personal shopping, vintage and the Kate Moss range.  To steal a quote from Ben Malbon of BBH: media fragments, ideas don’t.

4.  Align Your Big Idea To Your Business

Big Idea marketing is most powerful when it brings people along with the business. A truly robust Big Idea should be rooted in how the business generates value, where the business is going, or in the culture of the brand.  Apple’s ‘Think Different’ works on all these levels.  It’s difficult getting an organisation to buy in to a Big Idea if the accountants and engineers suspect that it’s just sugar sculpture from the marketing department.  It’s easier to get alignment and results out of something that is commercially true.  I’ll bet that Orange’s new ‘I Am’ idea has more trouble taking root in the company than See What You Can Do had at 02.  

5.  Match Your Brand Behaviour With Audience Behaviour

A traditional Big Idea didn’t care who you were or where you were.  But today channels make such a difference to how people deal with ideas: quick, useful interpretations of the brand idea for mobile phones; rich, interactive ones for the Internet, visual spectacles in-store.  Brand strategists used to understand consumers as consumers of the brand.  I wasted my early days in advertising like a Victorian botanist trying to establish whether buyers of Felix cat food were a different species from people who bought Whiskas.  Now brand strategists need to understand their audiences as consumers of media.  The most useful channel-planning tool today is probably a Venn diagram of how the brand behaves and how the audience behaves.  The overlap should always inspire something interesting.

There is a truism that an old medium doesn’t become obsolete, it just takes on a narrower role.  Letters become the medium for communicating something important; radio becomes our daytime companion.  And for a while it looked as though Big Ideas would take on such a narrower role; the hallmark of old brands that prized certainty and uniformity more highly than the opportunities of a more interactive age.   But if we realise what Big Ideas can do for business and understand how they work in new media, they can continue to be a compass for brands. And, like a compass, they might just enable us to go somewhere interesting.

Read Part One.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Tom Morton, Executive Planning Director at TBWA\ London (tom.morton@tbwa-london.com).