The World’s Largest Lasagna: What I’ve Learned from Thinking Big
Think big.
Creatively, I’ve been both cautious and ambitious. I’ve learned far more of course, from swinging big. Talking to folks at work about ideas for a client activation recently took me back to my senior year in college when my friend Jenny had gone to work for DeFino Pasta, a no-boil lasagna noodle brand and came up with the idea for the world’s largest lasagna event to be sponsored by the pasta brand. She approached me and our on-campus advertising agency Madison & Tower where we had met before she graduated. I was the president of the agency, much preferring to toil on our accounts versus attend class, preparing me plenty for the career ahead in marketing.
Madison & Tower was hired to handle local publicity, and we created a giant fork as our visual rallying cry. Cornell’s famous Hotel School would handle the actual cooking of the 3,477-pound lasagna, manned by fraternity and sorority students. We sought nothing less than the Guinness book record and an official from Guinness and the New York State Board of Health came for the huge event and the 63-foot x 17-foot meat lasagna in the making.
The day was a huge event with crowds, cheers, birthday parties and Garfield visits. The event and the sponsoring brand got on CNN, local stations and papers. It took hours to get to an even temperature, and sadly, we still fell short of the official world record, only nabbing The Largest Lasagna in the United States. Still, not bad for a bunch of college students and a pasta brand most people had never heard of.
I love these big moments and reaches for the moon. Years later at direct marketing agency OgilvyOne, my team and I would create The Search for the World’s Greatest Salesperson. And if follow creative campaigns, you know that the ones that consistently winwould often be the World’s First ___ or Best ___ or Biggest___. We shouldn’t be so surprised at Donald Trump’s appeal. The scale of his buildings, ego or narcissm. Emphaticness is American. We are taught to dream big, think big, act big and swing big. Even if we don’t know what we’re hitting.
