What can an idea do?

It can inform, amuse and inspire.
It can clarify. It can change perspective. It can shift worldviews. It can create and destroy biases/ perceptions.
It can change the way we live, work, play, buy, interact.
It can give purpose, alleviate pain, help gain contentment.

How big can an idea be?

It can reach hundred or billions depend on the media spend and the luck of ‘the viral’ roulette.
It can reach the depth of our souls and transform us. First a few, then many.
It can transform the way world works even if we don’t want to.
It can make real difference to people’s lives.

Can every idea do that?

No. Some ideas are expressions, some others are acts, some other inform our being and yet another our belief systems.

Advertising is about expressions. At most it can progress to momentary acts.
Big tech is informing the way we live, its shaping our being.
Big government/ conspiracies/ interest groups are trying to shape our belief systems.

The last two decades have been largely about the latter two. Big tech and big govt. playing with the malleable minds of masses. They are using the biggest ideas cynically, to control, to subjugate.

We need big ideas in good faith. We need big ideas that empower people to see reality more clearly, act more authentically, be the best they can be.

Advertising is trivial in the bigger scheme of things. It wasn’t so always. It was an important aspect of pushing progressive ideals, consumerism, globalism in 20th century. It has no values now. It serves no purpose beyond peddling goods, that too inefficiently.

Why waste ideas on the trivial when there’s so much good that an
idea can do with right tools (digital tech or analog systems) and right people?