Ever since ad agencies started grappling with digital disruption of their industry, a common refrain has been heard: "It's still all about big ideas. They can happen in any channel".
Execution has been downgraded. The focus in ad agencies is on getting 'upstream'.
Such thinking is a great comfort to superannuated planners and creative directors. But it misses out something huge.
Brilliant campaigns hardly ever born fully-formed on a powerpoint chart or on the back of a notepad. In that sense, they are not abstract 'ideas'. They are things, And magical things have to crafted, cajoled, tweaked and twisted into life.
Here's a guy that knew something about magic:
To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90 percent of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. […]
Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
And it’s that process that is the magic.
(In case you hadn't guessed - that's Steve Jobs.)














