BMW’s new ad campaign says “We say no to compromise so we can say yes to great ideas.”
How dumb is that? Since when are compromises and great ideas exclusive?
What happens when there’s a great idea but it needs some tweaking? Do they just throw the idea out?
“Hey Hans, I’ve got a great idea for how we can solve the problem with the headlights!”
“Oh, excellent idea Franz, but we’d need to change it a little to accommodate the new front-mounted death rays.”
“Gosh, I am sorry for not having a perfect idea. Forget I mentioned anything. I hope we can get this headlight problem fixed sometime.”
Nearly every good idea I encounter needs a little compromise to get it shoehorned between whatever bad ideas it’s fixing. Not to mention that great ideas are sometimes only identifiable as such in hindsight. Or not. Someone at Netscape had a great idea to rewrite their web browser, and while they were doing it Microsoft kinda took over. Then someone had a half-cocked idea to open source the whole thing. Turns out that was an awesome idea. The point is, we don’t necessarily know right away which ideas are great and which ideas suck.
I’m all for great ideas. As it turns out, I’m all for compromise, too, when it means more great ideas see the light of day.
And I’m all for fewer retarded ad campaigns.