By Troy Hitch, Global Chief Creative Officer, RAPP
In today’s marketing landscape, we’re facing a fundamental challenge. The traditional “Big Idea” approach—creating a singular, powerful concept designed to work across all channels—is struggling to deliver in our fragmented media ecosystem.
Not because big ideas have lost their power. They haven’t one bit. But while we’ve been perfecting our brand narratives, the way actual humans experience brands have fundamentally transformed.
Beyond the Single Story
The most successful brands have always stood for something meaningful. They’ve crafted narratives that connect emotionally and drive cultural relevance. This creative foundation remains essential.
But here’s the reality: consumers no longer experience brands through a controlled sequence of touchpoints. They encounter them across dozens of platforms, hundreds of communities, and thousands of micro-moments; each one shaped by their personal context and preferences.
In this environment, delivering the exact same message everywhere isn’t just ineffective, it misses the opportunity to create deeper, more relevant connections.
The Division Problem
Look at what’s happening in marketing departments today. Brand teams craft beautiful, emotion-driven campaigns centered around a core idea, but often out of touch with true consumer needs. Meanwhile, performance marketing teams operate separately, creating data-driven assets that work hard, but struggle to convey the essence of the brand.
One team builds reputation, the other drives conversions. And somewhere in between, the cohesive brand experience falls apart.
Your customers don’t experience your brand in these artificial silos. To them, it’s all just your brand. And when your messaging feels disconnected or generic, they notice.
From Personalized to Personal
Many marketers have attempted to address this through personalization. But too often, this means simply swapping out names or showing products someone has already viewed.
True personalization isn’t just about recognizing who someone is—it’s about understanding what matters to them in that moment and adapting how your brand story connects to their needs and context.
Today, it’s not just what people experience from your brand. It’s where, when, how… how often. It’s knowing when to drive action and when to just be helpful. It’s understanding every person behind the persona and creating experiences that put their needs first.
It’s about getting personal.
A Million Little Big Ideas
So how do we take the emotion and power of a Big Idea and make it personally relevant for every individual?
We make it little. A Little Big Idea.
And we make it a lot. A million little big ideas—each an authentic expression of your brand’s core truth, but adapted to resonate with individuals in their unique contexts.
Little Big Ideas are lived moments that start conversations and keep them going. They can disrupt categories and transform them. Define culture and activate it. Touch hearts, change minds, and drive action—even when that action is a truly profound commitment.
Making It Real
The brands succeeding with this approach understand that it requires both creative vision and technological capability:
Unified creative foundation. Everything starts with a powerful, flexible brand platform that can express itself in multiple ways while maintaining its core integrity. Create a system of adaptable messaging and design guidelines to tailor storytelling by channel and context.
Connected experience design. Brand and performance marketing work together from the same creative foundation, ensuring every touchpoint feels connected to something larger. Ensure teams align around shared consumer journeys and KPIs so every interaction builds on the last to deliver a cohesive experience, not fragmented outputs.
Data as a creative tool. Using insights not just to target but to understand context and adapt the expression of your brand idea appropriately. Use behavioral, contextual, and emotional signals to make moments that feel personally relevant, not just personalized.
Creative technology. Leveraging AI, personalization and decisioning platforms to extend creative thinking to scales previously impossible, without sacrificing quality. Use AI to generate, test, and optimize creative variations that match audience needs and platform behaviors in real time.
Personal at Scale
A Million Little Big Ideas means everyone can have a brand experience that’s uniquely relevant to them—not generic messaging with surface-level personalization, but a genuine expression of your brand’s core idea that connects with their specific needs and context.
Powerful. Individuals. Sustainable. Inspiring.
The future belongs to brands that can maintain creative coherence while delivering contextual relevance. Brands that understand the power of a big idea lies not in its uniformity but in its adaptability.
It’s time to transform how your brand connects—in the biggest little way possible.
