I recently had a great conversation with the MD of an FMCG company about their vain pursuit of a marketing silver bullet (or big idea) for a brand – and his acceptance that perhaps the pursuit itself was the wrong way of thinking about how to improve the brands’ position.

The discussion came up in the context of brand advocacy and how to get people recommending your brand. We are big proponents of the ‘thousand fires’ concept of trying to get as many opportunities as possible for your brand to be mentioned positively instead of relying on the one great idea that will do everything.

The idea of a ‘silver bullet’ comes out of a media world where only TV advertising could carry a brand and ads required a focus on one key thought to create genuine impact. The idea was therefore only applicable in a constrained world. We now live in an unconstrained world and so can free ourselves of this thinking.

So here’s to a multi-faceted and multi-layered world where lots of good ideas are much better than looking for, and failing to find, the big one.