Can you own a big idea or do you just get there first?
It's a dilemma I've been having recently, maybe also triggered by a move to a place with a slightly different style of planning. There is something about a big idea or a connections platform which means it has to be so large that if you restrict it to the truly ownable, something which I would define as meaning a claim that only this brand can make and no-one else, then you are limited to the very functional. Only a food company can make a claim about making a certain type of food, but that doesn't really inspire you to rethink the way you look at the way you feel about the food they make. It has to be bigger than that.
I've recently been working on the premise that a big idea comes when a brand recognises something that is going on in society and addresses it itself in its own particular way with its own tonality. It is the tonality that makes it ownable. I guess in a way it's like soap operas. East Enders and Coronation Street are both just tales of simple folk but they are done in completely different ways with a different feel and tonality to them.
I would like someone however to give me a cogent way of arguing that with a client. thanks. I'll buy you a German beer.