A mentor of mine, Dick Kerr, claimed to be the world’s highest paid copywriter in the 1980s — making more than a million dollars a year.

Dick’s famous corporate ad campaign for United Technologies was lauded as a wonderful, effective way to communicate shareholder value using simple words. Words not about elevators, jet engines, helicopters or air conditioners, just words about people and values. No pictures in this campaign, just clean type design and cleaner copy.

Dick was a bit of a drinker. He once offered me counsel saying “The idea to have an idea is sometimes more important than the idea itself.” Huh? Did I mention drinker?

Anyway, my company What’s The Idea? took this tipple-inspired phraseology to heart. My job is not to get clients nodding to a wealth of ideas. It is to get buy-in to one idea. That idea will frame all arguments to purchase. And those arguments are arrayed in three proof planks. All supporting he brand idea.  

How does one get to the brand idea? Ahh, the $64 million dollar question. Well, you start with lots of other ideas. Ideas that speak the consumers language. Ideas that lead to consumer preference. Ideas that resonate with corporate decisionmakers and shareholders. H.K. McCann called these truths.  But make no mistake the best brands are built on the clarion call of a single strategic idea.

Campaigns come and go, a powerful brand idea is indelible.

Peace.