Flares

I've recently used flares as a metaphor for various client campaigns.  It's the "big idea" concept of communication and marketing.  Each successive campaign needs another idea.  You put your head down for 6 weeks cranking out the gunpowder, cartridges and plugs, only to fire the thing into the sky.  Burns for a minute and then peters out.  You're out smithing another one (or some other agency is) to send out.  Each with a half cranked target and no feedback for the next one or the next guy. 

I read this little piece at AdWeek from Jaffe, and he mentioned the same idea.  So many organizations are so focused on that "big idea" that they forget all about the little stuff. 

I had a small role in a big presentation recently where I pointed out a number of these small things online that could be connected.  Client was fascinated at the idea that digitally they weren't really missing the big stuff, they just had never looked at the hundreds of little things.  My point.  They matter for sustaining any campaign.

How or who breaks the cycle? 

Well, it seems Lego listens pretty well to it's various audiences, but it took a pretty courageous soul to make the company see that.  Not because he could say, if we do it'll be worth $XX, but because he had a boss that believed that this new way had the consumer first, not the company.