Ideas First (5/18): The Big Idea

A summary of this week's assignment, which starts with a big idea and ends with campaign executions.

Each team needs to decide on their strongest concept. This concept needs to:
1) Meet the objectives of your single-minded message—think about what you want to communicate with your idea
2) Position/Emphasize your brand effectively—your idea should position your brand's services/offerings front and center
3) Be utilitarian and clever—it's easy to fall in love with the coolest idea, but you need to make sure that it fulfills the requirements of your messaging

In reviewing your ideas last week, each team had some interesting ideas, but they all needed a little work. Some common feedback for each team included:
1) Teams need to spend time coming up with the big idea (concept) before the individual tactics (deciding on the different marketing channels, i.e., website, social media, radio, etc.). It's important you come up with a strong concept prior to thinking about how it's going to be executed.
2) Teams need to keep their concepts contextual to each brand... for example, concepts that involve neighborhoods should focus on the brand's location (i.e., Madrone should spotlight Western Addition and not North Beach; Chow should be able the Castro and Inner Sunset, not the Mission). Additionally, if your brand is selling a product/service, make sure that your concept prioritizes transactions above anything else (for example, if you come up with an event around your brand, make sure that it benefits your brand sales/awareness before anything else).
3) Keep your tactics/executions practical. While we discussed various marketing channels last week, one of the reasons I chose local brands to focus on was to allow you the opportunity to share your ideas/brief with these businesses. So, as you decide on websites, bush shelters, social media, etc., let's make sure to consider whether or not it works for the brand, but also it's feasibility (i.e., Bell Jar will not be able to afford a nationwide commercial, but can definitely do a series of online videos.)

Next week, you will need to bring the following work to class:

Your big idea / concept.
This should be a paragraph or two, describing the overall idea / concept and how it meets the objectives of your single-minded message. For example, Good Vibrations would describe their "awkward first moments" concept, while Chow may decide to work on "Comfort food for everyone". Your big idea / concept is the most important component of your final project, so make sure you spend enough time refining / testing / qualifying it against the feedback I provided above.

Proposed Marketing Channels & Executions / Tactics
After you've settled on your big idea / concept, you will need to consider which marketing channels are the most effective, given the brand / company and audience. Once you've decided on the channels (you should come up with at least 4-5), then you will need to describe the idea behind each one, and how it relates to the big idea / concept, as well as the other channels. Is there an audience dialogue path? (For example, do they see an add in a magazine, which directs them to a website, where they can signup for an invitation to an event by joining the email list?) I want you to do some advanced thinking on how advertising is integrated.

As you start to develop your executions / tactics, feel free to start exploring your campaign tag lines, call-to-actions and creative (sketches, layouts). Feel free to bring your initial creative / copy to class (your assignment for next week will be to extend your executions / tactics to actual pieces).

** Put all of your content into a PDF that can be shared with the class. Create a page for your big idea / concept, then separate pages for each marketing channel. **

Anyway, let me know if you have any questions as you develop your assignments.