How Do You Define a Great Idea?

For a lot of people a great idea is /comes down to one word. That one word represents a concept, an idea, a strategy, a rationale.Coke. Mac. Guinness. Sex. Mercedes. New York. Paris. It could mean the world and more. It just has to tie back into the brand strategy, goals and ideas. 

For a lot of agencies today and especially in emerging markets like Uganda, the challenge is in defining and understanding the market dynamic. It’s not just enough to understand the demographics or the motivations; it’s equally as important to do a psycho graphic profile. Understanding whether in a time of crisis the consumer will choose to spend on your product or not is just as important as building the product or brand that they will not get rid of when times are hard, and they are hard here.The war moved from the market to the the pocket but that's a discussion for another time.

That is where an iron clad strategy comes into play. It is hinged on one great idea; in some agencies called the big idea. When you crack this, you have the lifeblood that will cascade through the line to all your materials, both below and above the line.The truth is that to execute some truly great concepts, agencies around the world have had to have an almost impulsive understanding of their consumers and publics. And to truly have that impulsive touch, look and feel of an audience for an idea, most times comes from the consumer/ public themselves.

So let the audiences define their own touch points, what it means to them to have relevant, measured, direct programming delivered at the time they want it, when they want it. Fact is a lot of the materials that go up on your TV or radio are hoping that between you and your 5 roommates or office mates; only 1 of you gets the message and acts on it. Often, that’s just good enough. But no one has ever asked, “What goes through the mind of a  viewer or a consumer the instant they see the visual sof an ad or a TVC?” It is my firmly held belief that this question will never truly be answered because audiences are as diverse as they are uniform.

Experiences, ideas, influences, passions, desires, pet peeves, perversions all play together to make each viewer/consume different. So we can’t know what each of them is feeling. So how do we tailor this message? We move on to the next best thing; their shared feelings, stereotypes, or ideas towards a common object, idea, or value and sometimes just a word…PAKALAST. CHOW. DISCOUNT. FEAR. ELECTIONS.

This is exactly what we did recently when we were trying to define a brand repositioning for Bell Lager, a product of Uganda Breweries Limited and flagship brand for 60 years. On top of all the above, we had to find the consumers to define what they wanted in order to define where we were going. We did. And the rest is history….

Here, the research:

Here, the new brand postion:

CONFIDENCE