The One Idea
//Every brand has one true idea hiding in plain sight. When you find it, it changes everything.
//Every brand has one true idea hiding in plain sight. When you find it, it changes everything.
For 30 years I've helped brands find the one true idea at the center of everything they do. The idea that drives a transformation in their business.
I've done it for Fortune 500s and startups. Now I do it for the small to mid-size brands I find most exciting — the ones building something real that are ready to bust out.
Clients Include
Turned around a moribund behemoth, driving it back to profitability.
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Claimed 10x market share by revealing the one idea hiding in plain sight.
Read the story →The 4 Quadrants of Strategy
A process developed, refined, and mastered over three decades — it has never failed to reveal a big, untapped idea. An idea true to your Company, resonant with your Customer, differentiating from your Competition, and timed to the Culture.
We call these the 4 Quadrants of Strategy. We delve into them iteratively in 4 phases until we find the One Idea that Changes Everything.
The 4 Phases
We delve into the four quadrants of strategy — gathering facts about your Company, Customer, Competition, and the broader Culture. We interrogate the research for patterns, frictions, and gaps.
We ask purposefully provocative questions to shift from facts to "kitchen logic." The answers are eye-opening and make sense at a gut level. They are sometimes surprising, even to us.
We distill everything into short, sharp statements written from the customer's point of view — revealing an opportunity area your brand is uniquely positioned to own.
A structured document you can use to direct all brand activity — from marketing to product to sales strategy. The one idea, made fully actionable.
Bad Latin American loans triggered credit tightening, greedy products, and rancid service. The CEO challenge was blunt: make people love the bank again. But cosmetic fixes weren't the answer. The bank had to be healed from the inside.
Hidden InsightAs VP/Account Director at Ketchum, I dug into the bank's founding history. AP Giannini had built BofA to serve the common man — lending to earthquake victims on a handshake, financing the Golden Gate Bridge, Hollywood, Silicon Valley. BofA had been a benevolent, inventive king who truly loved his people. But it had lost its soul.
The One Big IdeaPositioned BofA as the driver of economic growth, renewed hope, and upward mobility.
Each product team had to embody the benevolent, inventive spirit in every product, ad, and rate offer. A road show of "This, Not That" slides brought the story to life across every product group and state. One by one, they all signed on.
"'Banking on America' was more than a marketing idea. It became our way of doing business. I credit the campaign for turning around a moribund behemoth to profitability."
Competing against Sony and Panasonic in security cameras, Pixim's core technology — wide dynamic range — had been commoditized. "WDR" had come to signify a niche covering only 5% of the market. The technology was revolutionary. The story wasn't working.
Hidden InsightDeep interviews with top security camera buyers revealed they were cobbling together cameras from multiple vendors to handle one universal problem: variable lighting conditions. That problem covered 50–80% of all installations. No brand owned this benefit. Pixim could solve it — but no one knew.
The One Big IdeaOwn variable lighting conditions — the universal, unowned problem covering the majority of all security camera installations.
The strategy: own variable lighting, focus upmarket on the top third of the market by partner quality and price, and prove it with marquee installs — Paris CDG, Beijing Olympics. Engineering beat Sony on low-light performance within one quarter.
"Totem discovered an unmet market need, and a powerful new way of defining our main product benefit. This insight shifted us from being backed into 5 percent of the security camera market, to a position in which we can credibly compete for 50+ percent."
Answer a few quick questions and I'll be in touch within 24 hours.
If you're building something real and ready to think bigger — answer a few quick questions and I'll be in touch within 24 hours.
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