Lesson Fifty-Seven: What’s the Big Idea?

The agency folks of the world would have you believe that the 'big idea' is the answer to all your problems.

The 'big idea' will cut through the clutter, they tell you. Your message will be seen by your market. People will sit up and take notice of our 'big idea,' they say.

Don't listen to them because they are misled.The opportunity is not in the 'big idea.' The opportunity is to cut through the BS and look deeply into the soul of your customer. That's where the solution begins.

The opportunity exists when you begin to ask difficult questions of your business: What is our promise and do we really deliver on it? How can we improve our service 100%? What are our customers really buying from us?

The opportunity exists in discovering the unclaimed marketing turf you can grab and ruthlessly protecting it from the competition.

All the 'big idea' will do is set an expectation in your customer that you can't live up to.With the 'big idea' you make the sale once. But after your customer leaves disappointed, confused, wondering how you got their money, you can forget about making a second one.

My friend, Gregg is a savvy, very experienced marketing consultant. Earlier in his career, before he knew better, he helped several lousy restaurant go out of business simply by doing his job well.

"Nothing will kill a bad restaurant quicker than good advertising," he tells me. You can get people to come in once, and once they discover the food is bad, they don't come back and they tell their friends not to go either.

I want you to put your guard up to those misinformed creative types. They sing like sirens from the water, calling you like lonely sailors to jump into the water and embrace them. "Your message sing so sweetly," they will call to you. "It will tantalize and inspire your customers," they promise.

Don't listen because you may find yourself sharing the fate of those sailors, in a watery cage with so many other 'big ideas' and distant, fleeting claims.