Just what is the BIG Idea?

It was a fine spring morning in 2005, I was driving back from a pitch meeting, which had quite frankly gone nowhere and I was thinking there must be more to life than this when I had the big idea: if I put all my regular professional contacts together I actually had a great creative agency ready-to-go. The question was how to make it different from all the other agencies around; how to make it approachable, workable and enjoyable for those in the business? And importantly what would make it attractive to our potential customers?

I spent the next six months working out who I wanted to work with, developing the concept of the virtual agency and what our potential clients would need from us. In October of that year our intrepid band got together for the first time and I presented my idea. As soon as an idea is unleashed on a group of creative individuals it gains a life of its own and that is exactly what happened at that first meeting; BIG was born and we’ve been creatively collaborating ever since.

During the next six months my co-director, copywriter Jacky Fitt, and I worked on the structure, systems, legal framework and aims for the Big Ideas Collective. We knew that to bind BIG together without a building would need clearly defined, transparent methods, robust systems and commitment.  Setting out how we would achieve this and what our clients could expect was paramount and became the BIG Culture Statement.

Incorporating the business almost a year to the day after my original big idea, it took a further six months of development and testing to ensure everything worked and today it’s fascinating to see what we’ve achieved and just how far we’ve come. Fast building a great reputation with our fantastic clients, many of which are promoting us to their clients, we have won an International Green Dot Award for our business model, gathered a number of loyal associates, who also have signed up to our culture document and are pushing the boundaries of creativity and service.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our clients and clients we have not yet met, a fantastic Christmas and truly creative New Year.

I would also like to extend this along with profound thanks to all the members of the Big Ideas Collective for turning an idea into reality – here’s to 2010!

Ned Hoste – founder & co-director Big Ideas Collective