How a big idea can help put a small business on the map

Iain H
Jul 30, 2025
6 min read

Updated: Aug 1, 2025

Starting a business is no small challenge, especially in today’s environment.

While business insolvencies fell by 5% in 2024, the overall number was still higher than during the pandemic, remaining close to 2023's all-time high1. Compounding this are increases in employers' national insurance contributions, plus staff hiring and retention costs2.

If you’re to succeed, you need to stand out from the start. What makes your business different? More importantly, what makes you relevant to your audience? (Especially if they haven’t yet heard of you.) This is where marketing can help, and a big idea.

What is a 'big idea'?

An industry term, 'big ideas' were the preserve of advertising campaigns that used TV, outdoor and press to launch brands, products and services. These were accompanied by big budgets, a big media spend, and big hair (this was a formula that peaked in the 1980s.)

In the early 90s, digital arrived and traditional media began fragmenting. Now, it’s just as important for a business to have a website, social media presence, and CRM (email) campaigns as a brand campaign. And the good news is that digital is just one of many ways that you can promote your brand without the need for traditional, expensive media.

Here are some of my favourite examples of how businesses used small budgets to find ideas that grew bigger with the help of social media or a little PR. As you'll see, a lot of these began with small budgets, or by finding unique ways of connecting with their audience.

The Friars Pub, Bridgnorth

Whether your budget’s large or small, all ideas benefit from simplicity. Sometimes, that can be as easy as seeing something familiar in a new light. This poster for an upcoming music event at The Friars pub in Bridgnorth (now called The White Lion), does just that.

The designer realised he had all the key information captured on his phone screen in the form of texts sent to and from the pub’s owner. All he needed was a screen grab.

Not only was this brilliantly simple, the cheeky execution helped it go viral. The poster appeared in national and local press, including The Daily Mail, Metro, Shropshire Star, Irish News, and more.

Achieving this level of media exposure is usually with a big budget. The audacity of using a screen grab for a poster helped this idea enjoy free national publicity without any media budget.

The Welsh Tourist Board

In the mid-90s, the Welsh Tourist Board created a regional advertising campaign to encourage more people to visit Wales.

For London, they focused on two aspects: how easy it is to reach Wales from the capital, and the cleaner Welsh air.

All it took to bring this idea to life was the cost of a van rental and some soap to clean a grime-covered finger.

Imagine being stuck behind this in rush hour traffic. It would definitely resonate and, if it were on the road today, would likely have a QR code drawn on, so bored drivers could easily connect to the Welsh Tourist Board’s website via mobile as they sit wondering why they've not moved for 15 minutes.

Charlie’s Bar, Enniskillen

Thanks to digital, filming a commercial is no longer the preserve of established brands. Now, anyone can make a brand film and promote it via social media.

This is just what Charlie’s Bar, in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland did. They spent £700 on making a film to help pull in more business for Christmas 2023.

Retail and hospitality brands save a lot of their marketing budgets for the Christmas period. However, many retailers tend to cram a catalogue’s worth of gift ideas into a 30-second script that's neither creative or inspiring.

That changed in 2011 when John Lewis brought storytelling to the fore, and made the nation sniffle with ‘The Long Wait’, a tale of a young boy impatiently waiting to give his parents the gift he bought them. Now, making audiences sniffle with overly-sentimental stories has become a seasonal success strategy.

Charlie’s Bar had good reason to use this approach. For the past two decades, they’ve opened their doors on Christmas day for those who are alone.

Their tale of a lonely pensioner finding friendship in the bar may not be the height of production values, but its message resonated. Filmed on an iPhone, featuring a few regulars and a dog, their Christmas ad went viral, racking up over 500,000 views on TikTok within 72 hours of its upload.

It caught the eye of local, national and international news, appearng on TV and in newspapers globally. That's pretty remarkable for a £700 budget, and proves that a big heart can out-do a big budget. (That said, I'm wondering how they secured the music rights. The cost alone would have been much higher than £700.)

Kenneth Cole Shoes

This small, family-run business lucked out when a New York creative team starting their own agency called Kirshenbaum & Bond asked if they could create a campaign for the small shoemaker's shop.

Two factors made their campaign stand out: the use of topical news stories, and the slap-dash, hand-scribbled ads. Compared to how fashion’s usually advertised (high-end photography, glamorous models and locations), this was the polar opposite. It offered people an attitude they could identify with, rather than a range of shoes and accessories.

This was the first time that purpose was used to appeal to an audience. The Cole family has a history of being politically active by supporting Democrat causes, and these values are still evident in the brand today.

Imagine leafing through your weekend copy of The Times, Telegraph or Guardian when you encounter an ad that looks like these. It would certainly grab your attention, even today. And it also shows that a big idea can be simply executed, which can free up budget for promotion in traditional media.

The Phobics Society

One of the most common phobias is a fear of germs. It can be severe enough to upend peoples' lives, leading to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that results in a powerful urge to wash your hands after touching something that other people have used, such as a door handle or a lift button.

One of my previous Creative Directors struggled with this disorder, and I just happened to have a speculative campaign for The Phobics Society that I shared with him. One ad resonated powerfully, and we ended up presenting it to The Phobics Society, hoping to bring them onboard as a new client.

The client loved the idea, and, by sheer coincidence, were due to hold their annual conference at Manchester’s G-Mex Centre in a couple of months. This is when we realised we had a much bigger opportunity in front of us.

What started life as an idea for a press ad turned into something even simpler: we took the classic Department of Health hygiene sticker, and added a contact number for The Phobics Society. We printed 5,000 of these and headed to Manchester on the eve of the Phobics' conference.

We mapped out all walking routes from each city centre train station and bus stop to the conference centre, and wherever someone needed to use a handrail, push a pelican crossing button or touch any surface that had been used by others, we placed a sticker.

Working with a PR agency, we leveraged the stunt. But, any business that's creating a novel way of delivering a message can contact their local newspaper to tell them about it. It's worth a shot, especially if it happens to be a quiet news day.

The result for the Phobics society was spectacular. Along with local press coverage, the story was picked up by the BBC's regional news show, Look Northwest. For an outlay of £5,000 we generated an equivalent media spend of £380,000 (an ROI of 76:1). Even better, The Phobics Society reported an 11% uplift in calls from people seeking help.

Conclusion

To me, the smaller the budget, the greater the creative challenge. I don’t understand those who call themselves creative yet only want to write big budget TV ads, print and poster campaigns.

In scientific methodology, there’s a concept called ‘constraint satisfaction’*. It encourages people to work within constraints and it’s essential for improving reasoning and decision making. It keeps scientists grounded, focused, and stops them from letting their imaginations get the better of them.

I often think of this when faced with a small budget. With a big budget, one tends to take the obvious route, and true creativity is replaced with star actors and directors, with CGI-laden imagery that looks spectacular, but doesn’t say much about a brand, product or service.

With a small budget, you’re forced to think harder, smarter and more laterally. Rather than being a constraint, a small budget becomes a platform for some truly original thinking, and some very big ideas.

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