What is a big idea in the first place? Many agreed that a big idea was something that had legs in the online & offline world. Panelists worked on campaigns like Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, the Chik-Fil-A cows and the new VW Features site. These are things that work great on the web and can be brought into the offline world through print ads, or TV ads.
One part of the session focused on the pitch itself, or the lack of pitch. The general feeling was that if you have to sell the idea to the client in the meeting, you’ve already lost the sale. One panelist gave the figure that your idea should be 85% sold before you set foot in a formal presenation.
One way to do that is to simply have the team casually talking about the idea outside of the meeting room — to have that group really pumped & excited about the idea from the perspective that they want to work on it goes a long way to sell an idea.
They also had the idea of expanding the brand to a concept. An example was the brand True. While True is the brand, the big idea is Truth. They used that big idea to frame the web site for True.
They also encouraged us to stick with our big ideas if we’re truly passionate about it. You never know when an idea will hit. It took only a few months to sell the Subservient Chicken to Burger King. It took 4 years & 3 different car companies to sell what VW Features has become.
