In advertising, using emotion is entirely logical. Creative agencies have made this case consistently. But in 2013 Les Binet and Peter Field bought some much-needed data to the discussion. In their seminal report, The Long and The Short of It, the duo analysed 30 years of IPA effectiveness award submissions. The study found that emotional campaigns outperformed rational campaigns on every brand and business metrics that had been measured. But why is this? This article aims to answer this seeming simple question. It argues that emotional, brand-building communications are more effective because they attract more attention, create stronger memories and are more likely to be shared.

The shift to music streaming has led to songs getting shorter, music getting less melodically diverse and lyrics getting more repetitive. Or to put it another way, just as our visual culture has become more homogeneous, so too has the music that accompanies it. Let’s run through these arguments one by one.

In the early 1990s, two Russian artists named Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid hired a market research firm to survey the public on what they wanted in a work of art. Across 11 countries they then set about painting a piece that reflected the results. Each piece was intended to be a unique a collaboration with the people of a different country and culture. But it didn’t quite go to plan. Every picture looked the same. 30 years after the “People’s Choice” series, it seems the landscapes which Komar and Melamid painted have become the landscapes in which we live. From film to fashion and architecture to advertising, creative fields have become dominated and defined by convention and cliché. Distinctiveness has died. In every field we look at, we find that everything looks the same. Welcome to the age of average. Let’s dive in.

To make a big impact, we need a big idea. In brand communications, coveting the ‘big idea’ is commonplace. We look for them. Long for them. Laud them and lionise them. And yet, despite its ubiquitous use, the ‘big idea’ remains incredibly ill-defined. This article is an attempt to change that. It argues that ‘big ideas’ are ‘big’ because they spread in three directions. They go long, spreading across campaigns. They go wide, spreading across channels. And they go far, spreading across countries.