What's Your Big Idea?

"In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker
 unless you can also sell what you create."  --David Ogilvy.

Ogilvy's groundbreaking work on how to convey messages to huge audiences still resonates sixty years after he began turning his clients into household names.

His central principle for successful advertising is what he called the “Big Idea.” It applies to presentations as well:

1. Go through your data and ideas for a subject. Then, whittle everything down to an idea that can be expressed in less  than 10 words.

2. Mold your message around those 10 words.

3. When your audience hears your presentation, what do you want them to remember above all else? Stop thinking that you are giving a presentation about a topic. You are there to achieve an objective.

That’s the Big Idea.

It creates  the core of your presentation and keeps you focused on the punch line, not the supporting data.

Really effective presentations focus only on what your audience needs to see and hear in order to be influenced. 

What's your Big Idea?

Comments

[Juan]

Hi Steve, The great idea is being aware of your surroundings, being aware that you are there in the middle of everything, that you are being watched.

Awareness gives us that 3rd eye - view, the view from the other side, is like being emphatic with others that allows to connect heart to heart.

[FrodeH]

My big idea is to make other people grow - expressed in less than 10 words

[Steve Roesler]

Juan,

I like the idea that "you are in the middle of everything." That should be a catalyst for awareness.

[Steve Roesler]

Frode,

In ten words or less: a superb idea!

[Online Resident Program]

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