For the last several weeks I’ve been nervously anticipating a pending doctor’s visit where my wife and I would find out the gender of our second child. I wondered would it be healthy, would all the limbs be accounted for (turns out all the limbs were accounted for…+ 1 which means that it’s a boy!). Sorry, I digress, but my point is that a healthy baby is the result of a sturdy sperm and healthy egg that form a fetus that, if kept safe in the womb, will (fingers crossed) eventually turn into a healthy baby. Great campaigns follow a similar process: parents brace their excitement until they hear the first heart beat and similarly, clients reserve their approval until they hear (or see) the first evidence of the Big Idea. If the idea survives rounds of client edits and is properly executed by the agency, the idea could turn into a Big Idea. With all the focus on coming up with the Big Idea, many agencies skip steps necessary to arrive at a truly Big Idea.
So, if great campaigns start with a “Big Idea,” then where do “Big Ideas” start?
Big Ideas should be the natural outgrowth of Consumer Insights. The mistake usually happens when the research phase gets rushed or skipped and the emphasis moves to come up with something funny or clever rather than coming up with something that will actually change consumer behavior.
IF IDEAS DON’T CHANGE CONSUMER PERCEPTION OR BEHAVIOR THEN THEY AREN’T BIG IDEAS.
We’ve all laughed at commercials without being moved to purchase.
Here are 2 examples Consumer Insight driven campaigns:
The first one is from the well known Old Spice Campaign that my brother Creative Directed. The second is a Vampire Power awareness campaign that I worked on for iGo.
Old Spice
Consumer Insight: Women make over 75% of the body wash purchase decisions.
Big Idea: Make women want their men to look and smell like “The Old Spice Man” (Isaiah Mustafa) and make men embarrassed to smell like lady-scented body wash.
Campaign: “Smell Like a Man, Man” Web and TV Commercials.
Old Spice has been making “funny” commercials for years, but because this campaign was driven by consumer insights combined with a Big Idea it has not only become the biggest commercial viral campaign in history, but has resulted in huge sales increases.
iGo
Consumer Insight: People aren’t concer
ned about reducing Vampire Power because they don’t know that it exists.
Big Idea: Focus ads primarily on Vampire Power education (rather than products), and create experiences that make the environmental and financial loss very personal.
Campaign: www.vampirepowersucks.com
Where do Consumer Insights come from?
- Focus groups
- Talking with the brand’s salespeople and customer service reps
- Analytics
- Ethnographic research
- Social sentiment/mention monitoring
- Surveys/Polls
- Search trends
Test
Watch the video below. Was this a Big Idea? Why or why not? What was the Consumer Insight that drove this idea? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Congrats!
Great post and I think that commercial nailed it. Tying this into the emotion of the “what if” of major injury or worse death and the impact for the surviving family members really makes you think. For me the big idea is making sure in every plan executed we understand the main goal of the consumer and in this case life is too short so taking a 2nd and putting on the seat belt hit home for me.