Keep it complex stupid

There is a beauty in simplicity.
It’s a belief that is as simple as the very concept it promotes.  

Yet in practice, it is leading to an over-simplification that is damaging brands. It has led to a ‘singularisation’ of marketing. People may no longer talk about the unique selling proposition, but there is still the core target audience; the killer insight; the-single-thing- you-most-want-to-communicate; and, of course, the ‘big idea’.

There is a trend toward single-figure scores and a notion that the only way to do innovation is to be consumer-led.

For a complex world, there are just too many definite articles.

Brands are unique and complex, and over-simplification can be a false god for their marketers. Brands are like people, yet still we try to sum them up with a single PowerPoint slide.

While other disciplines have been embracing multiplicity, marketing is in danger of becoming stuck in a uni-dimensional world with everyone singing the same one note off the same song sheet.

The reality is that today's brands operate in a chaotic world. They need to cross boundaries of category, country and audience.

They have to talk about different things to different people, in different ways and across different channels – while maintaining a coherent brand voice.

They need depth and variety. Managing brands is complex and difficult.

Let’s draw a comparison to a novel or piece of music, which whether through their plots, characters and narrative twists and turns, or through their melodies, bass lines, vocals and harmonies, their authors or composers manage and conduct these constructs of multiplicity.

Brands too are constructs of multiplicity. They must talk not just to the core target group, but also to users, non-users and employees; to consumers in different countries with different cultures, who have a different awareness of and attitude to their brands. Brands need to address these multiple target groups with multiple propositions simultaneously.

Some of the best brands already embrace this and many have done for years – the BBC mission is multiplicity in action.

“To enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain.”

Coca-Cola is equally three fold…

“To refresh the world in mind, body and spirit.
To inspire moments of optimism and happiness through our brands and actions.
To create value and make a difference”

And if you can accept Star Trek as a brand, it too it uses the power of three (in this ‘The Next Generation’ more PC version of the original mission statement)…

“To explore strange new worlds,
To seek out new life and new civilizations,
To boldly go where no one has gone before”

So, perhaps one lesson is that marketing’s new maxim should embrace Einstein’s thought: "Things should be made as simple as possible... but not any simpler."

Read more from Giles Lury of The Value Engineers here.