Is Novelty Alone the Hallmark of a Monster Idea?

You have an idea. "It’s a whopper," you say to yourself. It's the kind that will change your business forever. It’s the type of marketing idea that you’re sure will cause light to fall from the heavens and angelic voices to chime in unison at the very thought of the awesomeness of the concept. You know it’s a monster idea because you’ve never seen or heard anything like it, and everyone knows originality is the hallmark of a monster idea. And they’re not wrong.

But what if originality isn’t the only thing an idea needs to grow monstrous? What if there’s more to the puzzle, what if novelty alone isn’t enough? Could it be that a truly monstrous idea has to be more than original? Indeed, it does.

Novelty is a wonderful tool, but novelty isn’t an idea, nor is it the most powerful characteristic of an idea. We’ve all experienced amazing ideas that weren’t novel. They were a perfect twist of an existing idea or the betterment of something that’s been around for a while. No one would argue smartphones aren’t a monster idea. But they’ve completely changed our communications culture and they certainly aren’t a novel idea. Cell phones have been around for years, and the internet has been a part of our culture for decades. Novelty didn’t make the idea of the smartphone monstrous. There had to be other factors involved.

The idea of a smart-talking, self-absorbed ladies man pedaling products isn’t an original idea, but Old Spice turned that idea into one of the most monstrous advertising campaigns of 2010, completely reversing their sales trends in the process. Novelty is only one of the characteristics we can use to judge the monster potential of our marketing and advertising ideas. What are the others? Glad you asked.