What's the BIG IDEA?

Most ideas are just that. An idea. Not good. Not bad. Just an idea. It just sits there being an idea no one cares much about one way or another. Pretty soon, because no one is paying any attention to it, the air starts seeping out of it and it shrinks from sight altogether, leaving only a discolored smudge on a very few people’s memories as its legacy. It’s not a pretty way to die.
 
And yet, millions of marketing dollars are spent each year trying to give life-support to such ideas, rather than allowing them to slip away quietly. Why prolong the suffering?
 
It’s not like they’re BIG ideas.
 
Big ideas are ideas that hit you between the eyes, grab you by the throat and shake you around by the ears. Big ideas make the earth move. They command attention and fill the room with their presence. A big idea is one that positions a product or service against its competitors in the marketplace in a way that gives potential customers rock-solid reasons for preferring it over all the others. It is an idea that is so simple and so relevant, it just cannot be ignored.
 
In other words, a big idea is one that sells.

Anything else is just an idea (may it rest in peace).