The Red Papers: What's The big ideaLTM? Colin ... - Ogilvy & Mather

What’s The big ideaL?
bring that ideal to fruition. They appear to be driven by something
beyond simply the next set of fi gures. IBM aims to make the planet
smarter. If that’s not an ideal, then what is?
Literally, an ideal is “a conception of something in its perfection.” 1
A “big ideaL” takes that ethically rooted notion of the ideal and extends
it into the world as it is lived, out of the realm of thought and into the
churn of commerce. It is the concise description of the ideal at the heart of
a brand or a company identity — its deeply held conviction on how the
world, or some particular part of it, should be. Brands and companies
with this crisp focus benefi t not only in terms of communications, but
also internally and in all the many ways they interact with the world
around them. It is a “big ideaL” not a “brand ideal” because it has the
potential to aff ect the way whole organizations think and behave rather
than just the way their brands are marketed.
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