Eager minds and an enthusiastic mob were restless, waiting for the most awaited event of the week. It was when; they would be interacting with some of the many masterminds of the brand, advertising and integrated marketing communications arena. IFIM B- School had the privilege to host a workshop, where the audience consisted of management students from SIMC, XIME, IBMR and Christ University apart from in-house students. They were addressed by the eminent personalities of the advertising field on the topics of Trends in advertising, the role of a “big” idea in Advertising, Media Planning and The making of ZooZoos.
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The workshop continued with our next speaker Mr. Ashok Sarath, who highlighted the role of the “BIG idea” in advertising. Mr. Sarath, Creative Director of Plan–B and previously the creative director of O&M. The presentation begun with a 10 minute display of a random collection of more than 20 advertisements. This was a little test. Mr. Sarath wanted to gauge how many people from the audience could actually retain more than 8 – 10 advertisements. He highlighted the challenges that the advertisers faced every single day on creating a break – through advertisement that would generate an impact on the audience’s mind. This is when he quoted a former chairman of Unilever, “Half the money spent on advertising is wasted. If only I could tell which.” That is when he said, that creativity in advertising is the hunt for a big idea. “There is nothing called a big idea, but there is only a big idea in retrospect”, he added. So it is an idea that we need to search for. Thus, for an idea to pass the muster, he listed 3 questions. Is it noticeable? Is it involving? Do I remember the brand? The idea is generated by making a brief. A strategy or a brief is a route map to a particular destination. Then Mr. Sarath moved on to some instances about the generation of an idea in few of the advertisements that he had created. The first Tata Tea ad where the...