Issue 93: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

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OPINION/ Creativity

The Power of the Triangle

If you want to build something that lasts, you need the right structure.

That’s why engineers use triangles to construct bridges. It’s how architects stabilise skyscrapers and how designers create frameworks that won’t buckle under pressure. The triangle is the world’s strongest shape – not because it’s decorative or complicated, but because it distributes weight evenly. It holds itself up. And once in place, it endures.

The same principle applies to ideas.

Photo by Forever Edinburgh

💬 Sir John Hegarty

At BBH, when we wanted to judge the strength of a creative idea, we didn’t turn to a matrix or a brand onion, or any other over-engineered model you so often find in marketing decks. We asked three questions – positioned like the points of a triangle – and if the idea didn’t hold at each corner, we let it go.

Because a good idea, like a good structure, must stand on its own.

A good idea, like a good structure, must stand on its own.

The first corner is memorability.
If an idea doesn’t get remembered, it doesn’t matter how clever or strategic it is. It simply won’t survive. In communications, your first job is to win attention – and more than that, to earn it. That’s harder today than ever before. People actively pay to avoid being advertised to. So if your idea doesn’t stick in the mind, if it doesn’t make someone stop or smile or feel something instantly, then it hasn’t done its job. At that point, it’s just noise.

The second corner is motivation.
An idea might be memorable, but if it doesn’t prompt a reaction – if it doesn’t make someone think differently, feel something new, or do something they wouldn’t otherwise have done – then what’s the point? We are not in the business of decoration; we’re in the business of persuasion. Great ideas are not passive. They nudge, provoke, and move. And motivation doesn’t have to mean selling a product tomorrow. It could mean building belief over time. But it must go somewhere.

The third and final corner is truth.
This is the foundation everything else rests upon. Without truth, your idea may be memorable, even motivating – but it won’t be trusted. And trust is what builds brands over time. Truth doesn’t mean boring. It means honest. And that’s an important distinction. The most powerful work we did at BBH revealed benefits rather than inventing them. Sometimes we amplified a tension, dramatised a product truth, or played with perception. But we never lied. Because you can’t build a lasting relationship on spin.

Without truth, your idea may be memorable, even motivating – but it won’t be trusted.of seeing, feeling, deciding.

So that’s the triangle. Three corners, three questions.
Is it memorable? Is it motivating? Is it truthful?

Not fifty slides or thousands of Post-its. Just a framework that demands clarity and rewards rigour.

When all three points come together, something remarkable happens. Your idea doesn’t just perform. It embeds itself in the culture. And sometimes, it reshapes it by becoming a movement.

We used this triangle every day at BBH. Quietly, without jargon, without overthinking. And it worked. Because strong ideas, like strong structures, endure.

Strong ideas, like strong structures, endure.

“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”

/John F. Kennedy