Need Big Ideas? Think Events

Long time ago in a land far, far away Shoaib Qureshy, the man who introduced me to the world of Strategic Planning asked “What is the core purpose of our business?” Why do clients come to us? Is it because they want a TV ad? A poster? Or a campaign? The answer was IDEAS! They come to us because they want creative solutions to their business problems. If we don’t come up with ideas that deliver results then we have failed. It’s not about mega-productions or great art direction. It’s about creativity that moves people.

Creativity and ideas are very subjective topics. They are similar to a word we use so much in our industry – insight. Everyone has a different interpretation of it. Everyone talks about it but very few get it right when it comes to putting it into practice. I think both an insight and an idea require skillful craftsmanship. I guess it works like that for every industry. Watchmaking for example is a fine art of craftsmanship. Take Vacheron Costantin’s Tour de l’Ile. Known to be one of the most complicated watches ever made and only seven of them were produced. Each watch is made up of 834-parts and took more than 10,000 man-hours to be completed. It costs about $1.5 million. Of course the price is not only for craftsmanship – it has an 18-carat silver gold dial with an alligator leather hand-sewn band and a pink gold buckle.

The point being that in every line of work skill and craftsmanship are key. Creativity in advertising and marketing is no different.

So what is the point of this post? Well being in the advertising business I may not be responsible for coming up with the biggest and best ideas in the world but I am certainly witness to some of the finest. As a brand strategist I find ideas of all kinds very exciting. In this series of posts I would like to talk about different types of ideas. Obviously there is no formula to ideas but there is certainly a structure that one can learn form. Based on my observation of creative work here is an attempt to break down ideas and look at some structures that have made it big.

This post builds up on an earlier one I did for the Interplay Blog. It talked about coming up with big ideas in general. You can read it here if you like. Now I am taking the discussion further.

One theme of big ideas I have noticed are event ideas. When hunting for big ideas it is interesting to explore the dynamic of an event. The power of an event is exponential. Events provide a great opportunity to build hype and anticipation. One can either lead-up to something big or simply unleash with a bang and then amplify the experience post-event, which in the world of today means coming up with compelling content that spreads like a virus.

So what are some big event ideas! Surprisingly there are not too many of them, but whatever is out there is superb! I think it is one structure that is rather underused and it is route with a lot of potential. Here I am going to share two such ideas. The first one is T-Mobile “Rain of Flowers” and it’s beautiful. For a brand that promises ‘Life is for sharing’ a rain of flowers is the perfect event idea that creates a moment which everyone would love to experience and share. Check it out!

T-Mobile Rain of Flowers (2 Min) from Rosen Regen on Vimeo.

The second big event idea is a staged robbery! That’s right. Audi for the launch of it’s A3 decided to create an interactive spy movie that kicks off with a real-life robbery and then gets the audience to become private investigators on the hunt to find the new Audi A3. It’s a brilliant example of using the event dynamic to engage a target audience and then turn it into a full blown social media campaign. Here is the Audi – Art of Heist Case Video!

These are just two examples. Have you heard of a Big Event Idea? If so, please share. I would love to hear of more big ideas centered around events.