Big questions, big answers

When Southwest Airlines Chairman Herb Kelleher first spoke to GSD&M co-founder Roy Spence about his business, he did not ask for a catchy TV tagline. "'People know what we do,'" Spence recalls him asking, "'But do they know what we stand for?'" During the ensuing soul searching the airline and agency identified Southwest's mission as democratization of the skies. "He was in the airline business," says Spence. "We put him in the freedom business." The brilliant "You are free to move about the country" campaigns helped turn the airline from a regional player into the fourth-largest, and most profitable, operator in the business.

The long-term view
The best questions take the long-term view. Back in 1994, Steve Wilhite, who has since run marketing for Apple and Nissan, was plying his trade at VW, where sales were tanking. But, in his first conversation with Arnold Worldwide, he didn't ask the shop to sell cars. He asked, as Arnold Chief Operating Officer Fran Kelly recalls, "How do we make VW important again?" The answer, of course, was "Drivers wanted."
Want bigger ideas? Ask bigger questions.