Big Ideas Matter

How shallow and short term commerciality is killing big ideas in Marketing

- Shubhranshu Singh

Many successful practitioners of Management and Marketing science have reduced it to hyping single words like ‘creativity’, ‘thinking’, ‘strategy’ or unwieldy combinations like ‘consumer-mindedness’ or ‘excellence in execution’.

There are even more cringe-worthy motherhoods such as “Keep an ear to the ground”, “Think like your enemy”, etc. Sigh!

Business is the fundamental substrate of modern society and Marketing is its cementing element. Both need very detailed elaboration. What modern capitalist society is seeking from its marketers is not a better tagline or a shinier neon sign. It is looking for core ideas.

Capitalism needs solid platforms that organize and operationalize value and wealth creation. The rising trade of damning opinion journalism against consumerism as well as consumer fickleness or apathy is because there are no big ideas that have emerged.

Apple is the last marriage of technology, design and an organizing, advancing idea for the enterprise. In my opinion, Facebook and Google/Alphabet don’t have it despite enormous and aweinspiring valuations.

Overall, media vehicles have added to the cacophony. Ideas are poorer, more blurred, easily drowned in noise, dropped prematurely or simply not primed up enough with investment. Where we need to be planting oaks, we have a quarterly bonsai forest instead.