Thursday, June 07, 2007

The end of "One Big Idea"

Brian Collins' recent opinion column in Creativity magazine is about advertising – not too surprising, given that this AdAge mag is about the creative side of the advertising industry.

But there are lots of insights and ideas worth consideration by anybody in the communication business, certainly including us. It's not online that I can find, but folks at the magazine allowed us to post it, and you'll find the complete column on our alternative site here.

Here's a taste of Brian Collins:

The One Big Idea model is dead. The last half of the 20th century was the only time when there has ever been a model. Since the dawn of commerce, niche products and shifting micro-segments have always been the! rule. TV created massive markets for mediocre, ``good enough'' stuff. That was the exception. Now we're back to chaos again, and we're not going back. This has undone some marketing organizations that are used to placing the bulk of their efforts in one broad, top-down, agency-controlled idea. Single-minded communication--The Big Idea--makes life easy for communicators. But people aren't single-minded. We're too busy living our lives to pay attention. We know what we love, and it's not brands spread like jam across every piece of media in our face. It's lots and lots of small, weird, new ideas and products--in lots of different places-so amazing that people will seek them out.

[BTW, some of you might enjoy subscribing to Creativity, as I do. Subscriptions include a password to the website adcritic.com, where a treasure trove of television commercials are archived and available. I see far more advertising there than I ever do on elsewhere.]

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