Simple Seems To Be The Hardest Word
It can be overwhelming for consumers and creators today. From obsessive compulsion to excessive complication, there’s an addiction-serving approach to supply and demand that would put Pablo Escobar to shame. But how much of our work actually breaks through the noise? How much content reaches the right people, with the right message, at the right time, in the right way? And how can we ensure more of our work does so? It might be surprising to hear that the approach we need is “simple”.
We sat down with Colm Woods, author of “Tailored Thinkers: The Masters of Perception and Persuasion” to discuss how agencies and brands often take a convoluted, overtly complex or over-thought approach to their strategies when the more simplistic approach is often the most successful. Here’s what he had to say…
Simplicity, according to Leonardo Da Vinci, is the ultimate sophistication.
But today, the word, ‘simple’ gets a bad rap. From serving as a one-word crutch for the least engaging communicators, to a get out of jail card for the most work-shy creatives, it finds itself triumphantly tacked at the end of the weakest and leakiest statements.
“Simple!” – they (always ‘they’) conclude, as you are helplessly left dreaming of a world with Imodium instants for shite-talk.
These days, you see, the word simple is central to the mansplainers’ manifesto, and only positively used to describe aesthetically-soothing Scandinavian design. This is something that causes us all to lose out.
As with most of our experiences in the oversaturated world of Industry 4.0, we’re all suffering at the hands of insatiable complexity obsession. From distracting fluorescent lighting on in-car entertainment systems to autonomous hoovers with the suction power of an asthmatic mosquito, many industries do more to feed ADD-induced complexity obsessions, rather than solve real-world needs.
It can be the very same in media and communications – an industry, I believe, is solely in the problem-solving business.
The Overwhelming Reality
Did you know that more information is written, captured and shared in a single social media minute than ever existed in thousands of years of human history? It’s staggering to try and imagine.
According to a 2018 Forbes report on the Internet of Things (IoT), there are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day, and over 90 percent of the data in the world was generated in the last two years alone. To save you ‘the Google’, that’s 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 of those tiny units of digital information a day.
Whether as consultants, creatives or traditional consumers, content has become an abundantly accessible currency, engagement offers endless potential for ecstasy, and information is being communicated at fibre-optic speed – but, not all of this currency holds the same value.
When notifications whirr, inboxes overflow and the hours melt into an endless malaise, we end up too busy to take ideas, strategies, tactics, plans and even sentences to their most effective and productive form.
I don’t know about you, but there have been times where I’m too tired to think, too exhausted to explain, too focused to be flexible, too stressed to strength test.
The result is noise. Sapped and sagging creativity and output obsession (media clippings, retweets, shares) rather than outcome interrogation (increasing purchase desire, brand recall, first preference, share of voice).
The Underwhelming Question
The question, for all of us, is do we create more than we need, accumulate more than we can ever comprehend, and rely too heavily on those who have no real bearing on our client’s objectives?
Well – to put it simply – we do. And changing times call for a change in approach.
No matter where you are in the world, who you work for, and what message you’re trying to push, this industry is all about taking, having or avoiding a role in basic human interactions at various levels of scale. From copywriters, to account managers, and everyone in between, there’s a refinement required.
For those that do it well, commercial and creative immortality beckons. For the rest… well, it could be indistinguishable insignificance.
So – it’s time for us all to focus on content that grabs, engages and hooks today’s content-addicted, twitchy-fingered, anxiety-embodying audiences. It can be an essay, a word, an image, or silence – fit for purpose, in context, and targeted.
The only thing it can’t be is mediocre.
Colm Woods is a strategic advisor and PR director who worked for leading corporations and political institutions across the Middle East. Swapping Dublin for Dubai, and Raheny for Riyadh, he rose to be the youngest Associate Director within the Middle East region’s leading strategic communications consultancy, before recently returning to Ireland. His book “Tailored Thinkers” is available on Amazon now