by: David Armano
The first time I caught a glimpse of a Pontiac Aztec on the road, I thought “wow—that’s different, I’ve never seen something like that before”. The closer I got to one, I thought “wow, that’s kind of strange looking—I don’t think I would buy one of those” (sorry to offend any owners out there, but that’s just my opinion). Now when I see an Aztec on the road—I think they are an eyesore.
In fact, when I’m in the car with my wife and we both see one, we sometimes will say to each other how unattractive we think the vehicle is.
Did Pontiac have a bad idea? I don’t think they did. I think they fell short on the EXECUTION of a good idea. Enter the Honda Element. Pretty much the same idea. A compact boxy outdoorsy-looking fun vehicle. But executed much better. (again, in my opinion). I won’t get into the details of the design differences, but suffice it to say that the element “goes with the box” while the Aztec “fights it”.
I’m not really talking about cars here. What I’m talking about is a mini-crisis brewing in the creative world. And it’s epidemic in advermarketing. What I’m talking about is the obsession with the “Big Idea” while forsaking “Big Execution” (does anyone even think that execution can be BIG?) I do. But I rarely hear about it. All I hear about is: “What’s the big idea here?” and “We need a big idea” and “don’t worry about the specifics—let’s just focus on a big idea”. OK, fair enough. I’m a true believer in big ideas—and believe you me, I drive my teams to come up with them.
But, I also believe in BIG EXECUTION.
If the Big Idea is the what, then Big Execution is the how. We need both. But sometimes advermarketing forgets about the execution. We take usability for granted. We take good design for granted. We take good editing for granted. We take good body copy for granted. Sometimes we’re guilty of putting the Big Idea on a pedestal while execution takes a back seat.
I’ve been thinking about this a good deal lately. And the agency.com/subway video crystallized it for me. That was not a questionable Big Idea. It was questionable Big Execution. If you watch the video to the end, you'll see one of the staffers asking an orthodox Jew if he’s allowed to talk to women. It’s not really funny. It’s not clever. It’s not endearing. It's actually borderline offensive. And it has nothing to do with winning over Subway or understanding the Subway customer. I recently came across a post defending the video which said this:
“While the video is cheesy people are still talking and thinking about them.”
And it immediately made me think of how my wife and I still talk about the Aztek every once in a while if/when we see one. I admire the agency.com folks for the courage of filming and posting the video—but I just don’t know about the execution. Every time I watch it, something doesn’t feel quite right.
So back to the original point of this. Execution matters. The craft we put into bringing a good idea to life. I should know about this because I’m not very good at execution. I have to work really hard at it. Maybe that’s why I’m a Creative Director vs. a Visual Designer or Writer. But I usually know good execution when I see it. I just wish that Execution enjoyed the same social status as the Big Idea. I think there would be a lot more great work out there. And then we wouldn't have to defend "cheesy".
Original Post: http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2006/08/whats_the_big_e.html
