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Promoting Nonsense: The Dumbing Down of Marketing
The most important thing about a point of view is to have one.
Simply Wrong Recently I joined an interes>ng group for lunch. Two of the folks were the founders of a start-‐up and the other two represented an adver>sing agency. I was present to act as a bridge having been charged with ar>cula>ng the new en>ty’s brand. For the next ninety minutes I was highly amused as a verbal tennis match took place between my four lunch mates. At the end, I was more confused by the purpose of the new venture than when I first sat down and said as much. One of the adver>sing professionals suggested the founders provide clarity by trea>ng us to a “30 second elevator pitch”. What followed was an ini>ally impressive string of words that when absorbed amounted to a dense, jargon-‐laden paragraph of nonsense. I am not sure who chuckled first but it prompted everyone to join in. We all recognized the absurdity of the exercise. It made me think about the ‘elevator pitch’ concept and the broader, more troubling trend of simplifying almost everything these days. In business this seems to have started in adver>sing with radio and television adver>sement lengths. The thought being, if you could not get your message across quickly there was something dreadfully wrong with what you were selling and you would never engage the consumer. All of this began with Rosser Reeves. The chairman of the Ted Bates Agency invented the Unique Selling Proposi>on at the >me television first became a force in society. This proposi>on most oRen took the form of a tagline that fit short adver>sing lengths. Reeves created campaigns for Bic pens, Minute Maid orange juice and Colgate toothpaste. His line for M&M’s, “"melts in your mouth, not in your hand." is an undeniable success and classic. Now brief, staccato-‐like messaging is the norm in communica>ons. The volume of communica>ons people are subjected to and the range of technologies that carry them are par>ally to blame. People’s aYen>on spans have drama>cally shortened as a result. A recent Pew Internet study in the United States suggests that the current genera>on of Internet consumers live in a world of "instant gra>fica>on and quick fixes" which leads to a "loss of pa>ence and a lack of deep thinking”.
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Our growing inaYen>veness is nothing new. In 1977 Nobel-‐winning economist Herbert Simon wrote about the coming informa>on-‐rich world and warned that what informa>on consumes is “the aYen>on of its recipients. Hence a wealth of informa>on creates a poverty of aYen>on.” The U.S. Na>onal Library of Medicine reported that the average aYen>on span in 2000 was 12-‐seconds and in 2013 that had been reduced to just 8-‐seconds. We are training ourselves to think and absorb only short thoughts. Publica>ons are now laden with how-‐to’s and top ten lists, news is an assortment of soundbites and online videos are missed if one blinks. AdmiYedly, they may compel us to seek further informa>on but more oRen they are unsa>sfying and we driR or surf over to another flee>ng topic soon forgeang what we set out to accomplish in the first place. William A. Henry III, cultural cri>c and author, bemoaned this deepening state in his book, In Defense of Eli>sm, “even cri>cal books about ideas are expected to be prescrip>ve, to conclude with simple, step-‐by-‐step solu>ons to whatever crisis they discuss. Reading itself is becoming a way out of thinking.” This why I believe no>ons like K.I.S.S. or “keep it simple stupid” are themselves unwise when applied universally. Henry said, “In the modern world, the cruelest thing that you can do to people is to make them ashamed of their complexity.” More and more I work with clients to tell their complex stories richly. I am not sugges>ng it works for all and for everything but I am discovering that many audiences of brands are craving deeper content to make beYer decisions and create stronger connec>ons. Yet, most marketers and marke>ng are going in the opposite direc>on.
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This why I believe no>ons like K.I.S.S. or “keep it simple stupid” are themselves unwise when applied universally. Henry said, “In the modern world, the cruelest thing that you can do to people is to make them ashamed of their complexity.” More and more I work with clients to tell their complex stories richly. I am not sugges>ng it works for all and for everything but I am discovering that many audiences of brands are craving deeper content to make beYer decisions and create stronger connec>ons. Yet, most marketers and marke>ng are going in the opposite direc>on.
Make It Short In the face of shorter aYen>on spans marketers logically, somewhat ironically, and hopefully not irreversibly, communicate ever shorter and ever simpler messages. The once sacrosanct 30-‐second commercial spot is losing ground to 15-‐second commercials. Nielsen Neuro, the researcher’s consumer neuroscience data arm, suggests that 15-‐second commercials are just as effec>ve or even more effec>ve than longer formats. “Shorter ads can be highly emo>onally engaging and very effec>ve at ac>va>ng our memory networks,” said Senior Vice President at Nielsen Neuro Blake Burrus. ”And, they oRen require less aYen>on to process them.” Adver>sers have noted this as the percentage of 15-‐second commercials grew to 41% in 2013 while all others decreased. For years I subscribed to the shorter-‐is-‐beYer approach in my work in branding, marke>ng and adver>sing. I jus>fied the outputs as beau>fully succinct, crea>ve expressions of complex proposi>ons. What I have come to realize is we should actually be sharing and celebra>ng complexity. Why? Because so much of the effort to simplify the complex only serves to dumb down the beauty of the original idea or the value proposi>on of a product or service. Alfred North Whitehead, the mathema>cian and philosopher, suggested the pursuit of simplicity was noble but it should be distrusted. He feared that we would err by dismissing or glossing over the intricate and not easily explained. One of his lesser known observa>ons is that people “think in generali>es, but we live in detail.” It is actually the detail that provides insight and illumina>on in marke>ng and goes a long way to engage consumers, ini>ate a dialogue and provide value in a purchase decision. This is an opportunity to differen>ate. Instead of living in the mindset of the 30-‐second elevator pitch or the 15-‐second commercial brands need to engage with their audiences using thorough and compelling stories. Google’s publica>on, Think Insights, is a fer>le outpouring of world changing ideas that respects the reader’s intelligence. HSBC has never feared the use of long-‐form communica>ons. The financial ins>tu>on’s latest campaign states, “In the future, there will be no markets leR wai>ng to emerge”, does not shy away from topics most work hard to avoid. They compel prospec>ve clients with fact and insights, “By 2050, 19 of the 30 largest economies will be in countries we now call ‘emerging’. HSBC’s interna>onal network can help you discover new markets wherever they emerge next. There’s a new world out there.”
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Unfortunately, mindless simplifica>on con>nues to be the rule. The ‘elevator pitch’ is employed widely with pundits sugges>ng it can land you a job, gain customers, aYract talent to your business, spark media aYen>on, and create buzz for whatever you are doing. I found a scholarly ar>cle that suggested these mini-‐pitches must last only 30-‐seconds, contain no more than 80-‐90 words and run 8-‐10 lines. One incongruous instruc>onal video on YouTube takes twenty minutes to describe the half-‐minute process with the obvious irony lost on the presenter. Disappoin>ngly, Harvard Business Review posted a blog in February, 2014 >tled, The Art of CraRing a 15-‐Word Strategy Statement. Thirty seconds is great if you want to run 200 meters or wish to watch five Vine videos. Please insert your own joke here about thirty seconds and lovemaking. The real point is that complex ideas should not be boiled down to irrelevance. We need to end our aYachment to slogans and buzzwords that address complexity without unraveling it. Our world is undeniably complex and we do it a disservice by sugges>ng anything different. Albert Einstein captured this universal tension by saying, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Make It Fast A few years back when The Wall Street Journal redesigned using color and added new sec>ons including the Weekend Journal and Personal Journal, a colleague shared her fear that it was going the way of USA Today. Personally, I thought the design aYrac>ve and layout invi>ng. My concern was with the content and the length of the wriYen work. That concern has only grown since. In the past fiReen years, news and informa>on has been beaten, shrunk, diced, and sliced into bite-‐sized easily diges>ble trifle. The masses accept headlines and top ten lists like they are gospel without a proper assessment of facts, logic, and argument. Nor do they scru>nize the source. Once author credibility was inviolable but sadly it is no longer. Even more sadly is how quickly and widely this dross is shared through social media. My own fear is that The Economist will dumb down its content. Every >me I read that publica>on I am reminded that learning and discovery are meant to be arduous. The journey is the des>na>on. If you are handed the answers what have you possibly learned? I love reading the magazine because it lays out both sides of an issue in detail and, though it is not en>rely objec>ve, it allows the reader to come to their own conclusion. Clever adver>sing has long supported The Economist claim that by reading it you will become sharper and smarter. Poster campaigns through the years have had fun with that no>on, “In opinion polls, 100% of Economist readers had one.”, “Not all mind expanding substances are illegal.”, and “Don’t make the same mistake once.
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At the 2014 Canadian Marke>ng Associa>on Na>onal Conven>on I presented a keynote on the sorry state of cri>cal thinking. I noted that something unfortunate happened in the last ten to fiReen years. In business and in marke>ng, faster and simpler became associated with beYer. That is some of the most flawed thinking of our recent >mes. George Bernard Shaw said it best, “For every complex problem there is a simple solu>on that is wrong.” We face more risks and trade-‐offs in making decisions in an ever-‐accelera>ng world. ORen we are forced to move fast regardless of a desire to be more deliberate and measured. That has made it easy to use speed as an excuse for avoiding the cri>cal thinking that produces highly differen>ated and clever business and marke>ng strategies. Behind every concept, every idea and every challenge there is complexity. We lose the magic every >me we aYempt to over simplify. A Medium Message The immediacy of available mediums now influence the quality of marke>ng. It is almost eerie how much of this was forecast by Marshall McLuhan whose famous line, “The medium is the message”, is more relevant than ever. The mad communica>ons thinker seemingly addressed the issue of social media before it even existed when he said, “We shape our tools and aRerwards our tools shape us.” Today the format of social media is itself an expression regardless of the content it conveys. Marketers are not only dumbing down messages they subs>tute technology for real connec>on. Marketers now have an incredible array of communica>on tools at their disposal. The op>ons are analogous to a golf bag full of clubs. Unfortunately, oRen all of the clubs are used for the same shot. These op>ons may confuse the intent and richness of the original message. I change the tone, language and cadence of a piece of wri>ng to fit the differences in format and audiences of TwiYer, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and my own blog (thank you social media for all the extra work). The tools are indeed shaping us. Swystun Communica>ons is fond of saying, “Every brand is a story. Make yours a bestseller.” There are many ways to tell a story with a host of variables including brevity. My fear is that in the quest for the short, clever and pithy we will forget to credit our audiences with intelligence. Marke>ng stories exist to help consumers make a more informed purchase. We run the risk of aliena>ng customers who are more than willing and able to take the >me, absorb and engage with smart and rich stories. Call me stupid but I plan to go down figh>ng against the dumbing down of marke>ng.
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Jeff Swystun President and
Chief Marke>ng Officer 416.471.4655