Have you ever experienced this question from a client, a prospect or even your boss just after you made a well thought through presentation with a stated objective and key strategy? It’s as if the person asking the question had not listened to anything you said.

I don’t know exactly why that question rankles me so much. The only possible reason I can think of comes not from the question itself, but from what it often says about the person asking the question. It’s as if the asker wants a magic bullet that no one in the history of the world has ever thought of until you came along.

As with virtually all of life’s challenges, there is no such thing as a big or original idea so much as a process to find the solution.

As with any strategy, direct marketing relies upon a set of discovery processes including research, testing and analytics. It is out of this discipline that big ideas emerge.

So the big idea really consists of buying off on the idea that direct marketing is a discipline and not a flash in the pan. The direct marketer’s scientific method approaches the market based on what he knows about this discovery process and what he must do to uncover the secrets of what the client’s target markets will respond to.

So my answer to the big idea question is that there is no “big idea,” but rather many good ideas expertly implemented that yield long-term success.