Ideas for profitable
communication
by Baruch ter Wal

Vanished into thin air

Shakespeare came up with that. You wouldn’t think so: it sounds so mundane and cliche. But when he first composed those words they were fresh, edgy, genius. Imagine it being said on stage for the very first time in 1600.

The moral is that an idea that once upon a time was a stroke of genius may not have cut-through today. The first person to say, “Hey, we don’t sell services, we sell solutions” was a genius. Describing your offering as a “solution” today does not set you apart. Yesterday I saw a dented tradesman’s van with the tagline “Solutions for Every Industry”.

Somewhere in the world, someone is coming up with the idea to call their services “solutions”. They’ve never heard the term used before. They too are a genius. But it’s still not going to have cut-through.

That’s why research, especially competitor research, is so important. Without it, you or your creative team could be re-inventing (at great expense) an idea that was once shiny, but is now dull from overuse.