Developing the BIG Idea

Based on your new understanding of your organization, consider what changes need to happen as the organization tackles its problems. 

Using your research, map the IDEAL Brand Code of your organization. Use the diagram on page 103 and 104 of 4-D Brandingas a guide. 

After completing all the branches of the Brand Code, fill in the center with a statement that summarizes the “Big Idea” of the organization. Use the “Big Idea” to create a theme for your IDEAL organization. The theme should be a unifying story to inspire all the changes you want to make in the organization. This is a story version of the “end state” that you envision for the future of the organization. 

Try to make these as concise and as focused as possible. Focused in that it is capable of communicating a clear, powerful idea. consider that themes contain prototypical content: a hypothetical, most typical instance of a category. This is an idealization of your company’s reality and not reality itself. Think about some of the fashion examples in class. 

To help you think about themes or metaphors consult the reading 4-D Branding: Metaphors and the notes on themes from the book Marketing Aesthetics. 

Your themes or metaphors should be realistic and believable. They should be creative ideas that respond to qualities that are already present in your brand. maybe they represent a totally new way of seeing or thinking about the brand but they must also ring true. You are just exposing the existing soul of the brand in a new way. As sources of inspiration, consider looking for themes or metaphors that are suggested from these areas: 

• mission, vision, objectives 

• values 

• core capabilities or “sticky assets” 

• legacy 

• personality 

• (sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, ruggedness) 

These themes or metaphors represent options for a NEWBIGIDEA for your organization. these themes should be able to be options for the center of the Brand Mind Space diagram.