What's the Small Idea?

NOT ONCE IN MY 20 YEARS IN COMMUNICATIONS has a client ever asked me to come up with a small idea. I can count on every briefing or brainstorm to exhort me to deliver a “big idea.” It can be exasperating, partly because it’s such a cliché, and partly because it often forces the agency to play to the client’s desire for flash and spectacle when nuance and subtlety might be more effective in achieving the objective.

I was thinking of the power of the small idea recently when I interrupted a healthy walk home from work with an unhealthy stop at a Johnny Rockets burger joint. The experience was the same as a thousand fast-food visits before it while I ordered. (Burger, fries, diet coke). The waitress delivered my food, but then to my amazement, put a shallow cardboard bowl on the table, grabbed the ketchup bottle and poured a smiley face for me. I couldn’t help smiling back at her and the bowl. They both seemed so pleased.

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