The big ideaL

 

The big ideaL™ is Ogilvy’s philosophy on how brands can thrive today. It was discovered, not invented. Looking at our successes and at other brands we admire, we saw that they all had a higher ideal at their core: a point of view on how the world should be coupled with a resolve to work for it. Big ideaLs can be fun or serious, grand or frivolous, and everything in between. Over the last four years, we have developed this philosophy into a practical technique to help our clients discover and develop ideals for their brands. We have also conducted research that has confirmed our belief that brands with strong ideals enjoy greater share of growth. There is real economic value in a big ideaL. At its heart, The big ideaL is very simple. It has two parts. The first concerns Cultural Tension: to be relevant and important, brands need a point of view on the big and small topics of the day. The second part is the brand’s Best Self: to be valid, a brand must have some authority to be able to hold its point of view. We find this by exploring the brand’s history and asking when the brand was at its best. It is in the intersection where these two parts meet that the magic lies. On this site you will find a paper that explains The big ideaL and shows how to develop one. You can also read our analysis of the research behind The big ideaL and view some of the recent creative work that came from the ideals of which we’re most proud.   Ogilvy & Mather’s Red Papers project is our international showcase for the counterintuitive and transformative thinking that flows throughout our network, the kind of thought leadership exemplified by The big ideaL. Ogilvy has written What’s The big ideaL as our first major public statement on this new thinking about brands and companies. What’s The big ideaL articulates a signature vision of how businesses can best meet the social and competitive pressures of the modern world. Ogilvy has refined The big ideaL over several years in engagements with global clients, and we have seen how powerful a well-crafted, wisely deployed big ideaL can be. We think it is something that every company should consider, Ogilvy client or not. The big ideaL™ makes good, intuitive sense. People ought to flock to brands that express a point of view consumers can identify and identify with. After all, we act that way when making friends, responding best to those people whose ideals we respect. But “ought to” isn’t good enough. We set out to prove that idealism – and The big ideaL in particular – helps brands succeed. David Coppock, Ogilvy’s Director of Advanced Modeling, developed a quantitative measure of brand idealism, compared it to other proven metrics for brand success, and concluded that The big ideaL improves brand performance. Put simply, Coppock proves in The Measure of The big ideaL that it works. Coppock identifies those categories and regions in which the idealism effect shines brightest, and he provides an invaluable segmentation of brand idealism. He shows, as we knew in our hearts and knew from our clients’ success, that The big ideaL is one of the most valuable tools a brand can make use of. If you heard that the secret to stronger market share and higher profits was hidden somewhere inside your company, you’d leave no stone unturned in trying to find it. And if you found out that using this secret did not require a massive capital outlay or a risky strategy, you would not hesitate to try it. That secret is The big ideaL, and the original customer research Ogilvy commissioned proves that a strong big ideaL means strong sales. Simply put, The big ideaL sells big. Our research shows that customers consider brands with strong big ideaLs to be their first choice How can you increase your market share and sales by using The big ideaL?