Don’t sweat the big idea
Not all ads need a big idea. Instead, they must focus on finding new ways to say the same thing again and again, writes creative strategist Zac Martin.
There’s a famous joke called The Aristocrats:
A family walk into a talent agent’s office. The agent asks what their act is. The family get on stage, and do the most vile things to each other. Eventually, the agent asks what the act is called. “The Aristocrats.”
It’s a favourite among comedians, a rite of passage. The setup and the punchline always remain the same, but each person can make it their own, riffing on the middle. Usually it’s an excuse to be as filthy and offensive as possible. This is South Park’s version:
Nice one Zac. Agree.
There was a time I was coaching a production business and one of their clients was a giant low cost retailer. The creative director hated working on that work and thought it didn’t have a solid brand. We used to resource this account with different operators working simultaneously with no real creative direction and they were under the time pump to produce whatever they could in the time they had. This created a really low end ‘cheap’ looking suite of work. The creative director used to fight tooth and nail against this. This was one of those accounts that this work that was churning out actually was their brand. It said lowest cost in town and it sold it’s butt off for them. We can be very precious sometimes in this industry.
There is something for every brief and every client and a one size fits all approach certainly doesn’t work. Including your approach above wiped over everything of course too. Nicely said though.
As Andrew Killey will confirm, 30 years ago the punchline wasn’t The Aristocrats, it was The Debonaires.
It was also ‘The Sophisticates’. Seems though, that ‘The Aristocrats’ was the initial punchline, first cited in 1975.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocrats
And I’ve been a proud member of the Debonaires Lunch Club for many years. Although no-one’s actually told the joke yet!