October 20, 2004
start lots of conversations
Johnnie Moore, having read my Beermat post, makes an excellent point:
This resonates with my own agency experience, and is part of the huge downside to the “Big Idea” culture. Agencies persuade themselves that everything is about the big idea. The bigness of which is objectively determined by… the biggest ego in the building, usually. Or (just as bad) by a string of sleep-inducing focus groups around the country. In a networked world, it’s much, much smarter to let the market determine the great ideas by starting lots of conversations instead of rigging up a giant 60 second propaganda dump.
“Start lots of conversations.” Somebody tell me, what’s so hard about that? How come people don’t get it? Seriously, I want to know.
“Somebody tell me, what’s so hard about that? How come people don’t get it? Seriously, I want to know.”
I think you already know;
1) Ego.
2) The mentality that “I know what they want more than they do.” The idea that the executive knows the market better than the market knows itself. Sometimes, this is correct, but I’ve found most times, it’s asinine.
3) People with fancy degrees and/or job titles don’t want the answer to be as simple as “let the market decide.” It threatens their very existance, no?
4) Ego.
5. And Ego.
Ego certainly defines much of the approach, but let