The “Big Idea” Snipe Hunt
I don’t think it would be unfair to say that a significant percentage of life in a traditional agency is spent chasing “The Big Idea.” That being said, consider this:
Google wasn’t a big idea.
YouTube wasn’t a big idea.
Flickr wasn’t a big idea.
Facebook wasn’t a big idea.
Twitter wasn’t a big idea.
Feel free to disagree with me, but as I survey our modern media landscape, it seems that very few things that are meaningful on a day-to-day basis would qualify as a big idea within the context of traditional agency pitch session. In fact, I’d argue that each of the aforementioned properties have their roots as a dumbfoundedly simple pieces of UX.
So, and in industry speak, is the ROI on going after the Big Idea worth the investment or are we better off going with simple and utilitarian concepts and allowing them to grow organically?
posted by Dakota Brown on April 2nd, 2009 at 9:16 am Permanent link to this post
4 Responses to “The “Big Idea” Snipe Hunt”
How do you define a “big idea?”
I would say that the prime indicator of a “big idea” is an assumption of conceptual infallibility- the belief that since the idea is so great that it cannot fail.
I don’t agree with that definition at all. For me the big idea should be defined as the simplest, most effective way to make our client’s lives (and their customer’s lives) easier. Granted, that’s not what always comes out of every client engagement, but it should be a goal.
Hmmm.
I guess I’d ask, “How often does the simple, most effective solution warrant ‘big’ and an adjective?”