Many people in marketing and advertising are on a constant quest for what they call the ‘big idea’.
It’s like the Holy Grail for business and yet, in my experience, most organisations wouldn’t know what one was if it came up and smacked them in the face.
You see, I truly believe big ideas are all around us all the time … it’s just we have to take the blinkers off to see them.
In the US, the Bank Of America has launched what I think is a truly big idea … and it’s an opportunity any bank could have had if they’d looked abit harder.
Research showed people on a budget tended to mentally ’round up’ their purchases to the nearest dollar to ensure they never overspent on their weekly/monthly allowance. Infact, doing this meant they’d often have abit of money left in the budget which they could use in the next period of spending.
So what have the Bank Of America done?
Well they’ve simply launched a program where every purchase made is AUTOMATICALLY rounded up by the bank to the nearest dollar, with the difference being immediately placed into a special savings account. Suddenly people who find it hard to save money are building a little nest egg without even having to consciously put money aside … which results in the Bank Of America not only being differentiated from the competition, but also offering consumers a real reason to change their financial organisation, let alone making their existing customers feel they’re with a bank who actually does give a shit about them. Brilliant!
I remember having countless arguments with the folks at Apple about this sort of thing because at the time, they were obsessed with innovating their way into a big idea … and yet, you could argue their biggest successes over the last few years [iPod and iMac] had little to do with the innovation of new technology – and more to do with the exploitation of old opportunities.
Well, that’s what we keep arguing about with them anyway, ha!