Ideas first.

In marketing and the advertising agency business, there is an ongoing learning curve to understand and implement new tactics. We constantly work to make sure we can effectively incorporate and implement new media and guerrilla options into our clients' campaigns. In the current environment, most of these popular tactics have to do with utilizing social networking sites and creating meaningful content channels via blogs, podcasts, YouTube, etc.

Many times, these new tactics are treated as ideas in and of themselves. For the record, these tactics are not ideas. They are just a new channel for ideas.

Ideas are the stuff that make campaigns successful, memorable and ultimately, famous. And here’s the truth about great ideas: They’re not easy. Creating meaningful, simple ones is downright hard. There is no formula, software or machine that will give you a great idea. It requires understanding of your objectives, personal knowledge of people, intuition, time, an unrelenting desire to “nail it," and honestly, it takes smart people.

Take time. Take care. And you will take your communications to new level with a simple, smart idea.

Once you have it, then get to work on how to marry your idea to the target through your tactics. But always remember that your idea is the foundation of your campaign’s success. Discard tactics that don’t allow your idea to flourish and aggressively seek those channels that do.

Now, if you ever hear someone say, “I have a great idea, let’s utilize social media in our campaign," you can reply, “that’s not an idea, it’s a tactic. What’s the idea?”