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Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010
In Search Of Digital Simplicity
by Jaffer Ali
As Einstein once said, "I wouldn't give a nickel for
simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give
my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity."
It has taken me thirty years of my professional life to
become a simple guy. Starting in the home video business
in 1980 and progressing from analog to digital, in
retrospect it seems that business was an ongoing exercise
in complexification.
Nowhere is "complexification" more apparent than in online
marketing circles. Here, jargon is supreme. A visit to
half a dozen websites only serves to prove the point.
Marketing problems can't be solved, let alone even
explained through complex, tortured language, despite the
fact that the digerati have elevated double talk to an art
form.
In fact, complexity often seems to be the end goal for
digital mavens.
But as is the case with most things, what we need is some-
thing quite different. We notice that everything is rushing
by us at increasingly faster speeds. Time frames for every-
thing have grown shorter. Our digital tools were supposed
to help us cope with the faster pace of life and all they
have done is pave the way for even more frenzied activity.
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I suggest we heed the advice of the late British economist,
E.F. Schumacher, who said "any intelligent fool can make
things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a
touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the
opposite direction and contemplate a wholesale change in
thought and attitude." The more you ponder this, the more
sense it makes, because the more deliberate we are in our
pursuit of simplicity, the better able we are to separate
the wheat from the chaff between our ears and recognize
the challenges that confront us.
Deliberate simplification doesn't come easily. It took
Albert Einstein a lot of work to arrive at e=mc2.
Deliberate simplification means stripping away the
nonessential to discern what is important. But the online
media landscape is anything but simple or discerning.
Indeed, complexity has become a virtual means to its own
end. Behavioral targeting is just the latest manifestation
of this reactionary complexity that in reality creates
more problems than it solves.
As our lives have become systematically more complex,
we have replaced essential human pursuits with mindless
activity and details. Is it any wonder why the great
spiritual traditions always speak of the virtues of
simplicity? Is it any surprise that in an ever-more
complex world this simple truth falls on deaf ears?
In my opinion, moving to the other side of complexity makes
good marketing sense. I want you to think of the last five
marketing campaigns that made an impression on you. Dollars
to navy beans you are thinking about a jingle or catchy
phrase. Messaging was and will always be primary in the
marketing hierarchy. But any cursory glance at a typical
agency website reveals one specious technological solution
after another, with no emphasis whatsoever on the message.
This growing complexity, in a vain attempt to harness
accountability and scale, in actuality achieves the exact
opposite and only serves to further obscure and confuse
the big picture and drive performance down.
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Case in point, Google is not a scalable marketing platform.
That's why it needs 1.5 million advertisers. The more
complex solutions become the less genuine scale they
engender. Television scales precisely because it is so
simple.
To the MBAs still reading, here's a little secret:
Simplicity not only works better than complexity, it
costs less. Complexity adds costs and that's why the
intermediaries in the media ecosystem ? the media
agencies, ad networks and technology vendors -- continue
to champion it, and why content players and publishers by
the thousands can't afford to stay in business.
Listen to Thoreau: "Our life is frittered away by detail...
Simplify, simplify, simplify! ...Simplicity of life and
elevation of purpose." Deliberate simplification is a
matter of looking inward; a process of rediscovering
essence and harmony. It is authenticity in action and the
necessary basis for any worthy marketing campaign.
Let me leave you with a quote from the linguistic
philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein that simply says it all:
"The aspects of things that are most important to us are
hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity."
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Questions? Comments? Email me at: quote (at) Quotes2u.com
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