Need a BIG idea?

If ever there was a boring product line, industrial cleaning solutions would be the leader of the pack. You'd think.But the pack included a Pennsylvania cleaning solutions company co-founded by a man named Ben Stapelfel. He called his company The New Pig Corporation, pig standing for Partners In Grime. And it's brilliant!

Check out the website, newpig.com, It's actually fun. Cleaning solutions may not be fun but New Pig's product presentation and company vibe are very much fun and people react by buying from them. Okay, technically, it's companies that react by buying from New Pig. But there's no such person as a company, there are only people at a company. And New Pig tapped the vein of humanity behind corporate logos. It's a big idea, a relevant big idea, that worked.

Where do big ideas like that come from? Who knows for sure but it involves hard work, research, relevance, inspiration, magic and plain old guts. One thing we do know. The big idea isn't going to come from the same-old way of doing things. And it probably isn't going to spring from a committee meeting. Committees seem to exist for only one purpose: killing big ideas with stifling comments like who else does anything like this? That's not the way we do things here, or if it's not broken, don't fix it.

Spend a morning watching local commercials on a cable channel and you'll see the results. Yawwwwn.

New Pig got creative in taking a business that's ordinarily dark and boring and making it fun and unique. The pig theme runs in just about everything they do, including the catalog, which, of course, they call a Pigalog.

When you evaluate your own company, first research what your direct competitors are doing. Come up with a list of all the clichés in your industry, then don't do any of them straight up. Take the ideas and twist them, make them a tad wonky. Make them different, make them uniquely yours then develop a theme and a personality and hammer them home.

It's ok to be different and do something completely outside of the box. Don't always do what's expected of your industry. What's the fun in that?

So start thinking of some out of this world ideas and let me know how it works out. I'd love to hear from you. If you need any help, please do not hesitate to ask me. Good Luck!