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Simplicity = god selling ad

By: Cicely K. Leblanc

In advertising you put across information to your prospects with the purpose of increasing your market share. But, the question is how on earth do you get your message through? There’s so much rival noise already perturbing your prospect in such a cluttered world.

How do you rise above the daily ruckus, not just the static coming from other advertisers, but the clamant information explosion we’re all living in?

Nature understands that in a jumbled world, you have to find a way to get yourself into clear space if you’re going to commune successfully. The question is: how do you get your advertising into clear space?

Un-clutter, if you want to be discovered in a hectic world, be ruthlessly simple. Simplicity is one of the main foolproof advertising techniques. Advertising is communication, and if the right person does not really listen to your advertising, having heard, does not noticeably understand what you are saying, then you’ve failed.

Put plainly, we’re living in the over-information age; this entails the more information you put into your advertising, the less people will take out. Simplicity exists to hold back the Crime of Add-vertising. Bear in mind, even though it’s called an “ad,” the most efficient way to commune a message is actually to delete minor information.

All great messages are profoundly simple. The enduring philosophical tool, Ockham’s Razor, states that when there are two acceptable answers which solve a problem equally will, the more acceptable answer is the simpler one. Work for a compression of a persuasive idea into a hard nut core – a profound simplicity; a haiku – like intensity.

But, being simple is not a trouble free job. The art, of course, is not how short you make it. But rather, how to make it short. It is much easier to be complex than to be simple. Simplicity is one of the most definite characteristics in advertising and may be one of the most forgotten.

This might be due to the fact that the “simple” has a dual personality: What is simple may have a smart synthesis or simply a primary obviousness. To be simple entail much more self-confidence than to be complex. The simple may be mortifying.

After all, each of us wants to be seen as a person with sophisticated thoughts. Complexity of rationale could be easily mystified with intelligence by the incautious. But, the simple is only developed, only valued, when it is discovered before it becomes obvious.

Until it is revealed, is somewhere, close by, but very well disguised. It is important for someone to think about it first, to discover it first so that someone else could then say, “Wow, why didn’t I think of that before?”

Only following this statement, repeated by a lot of people, is a simple idea transformed into something obvious. I imagine that it must have been something like this with the wheel, the paper clip, the headline “Think small” for VW or the picture of a piece of purple cut silk for the cigarette silk Cut. Whoever discovers the obvious first becomes a genius, and those who only repeat it remain mediocre.

Being simple is also leaving an objective and trying to reach it with minimum resources, getting there by the shortest energy in this search, everything that does not put in to simplicity, its purity, must be taken away.

Being simple is communicating a new idea using the least possible number of elements, creating something so strong and powerful in its simplicity that it ends up generating a wonderful reaction in whoever is exposed to it, what is a simple moves person.

Advertising is communication. The outcome of advertising is measured not by what is said, but by what people realize. A campaign starts to work when whatever is being sold – it may be an institutional message, a promotional price, or a new vehicle – is noticed by those who are exposed to it.

But simply understanding that there is a new vehicle in the market is not enough. It is necessary to notice what makes this car different from the others, why it is better. But even this is not enough. It is necessary for this difference to be truly related for those who are seeking a vehicle.

Is it really simple? To know this you just have to answer two questions: “What am I going to say about this product?” And “Is what I am going to say, truly what is going to motivate people?” The answers to these two questions are the most important part of the creative process for any campaign, TV film or press ad.

Being simple is also being objective before creating. A European country, such as England, for instance, is used to a level of complexity directly associated to its capacity of observation of more elaborate messages. In countries such as Brazil, young and still under development, this capacity is much smaller, being simple and objective is not an option; it is a necessity.

In Brazil, the benefit of a product must be communicated in a clear, uncomplicated manner so that it may be totally understood by the greatest number of people.
Nonetheless, being simple is not enough. One must be simple and surprising.

This is could be one of the keys to Brazilian advertising: simple without being simple-minded; objective, yet creating an impact at the same time; popular without being mediocre. Advertisements such as Guarana Antrctica, with a minimum of elements, communicate the synthesis of a benefit: No calories, no belly. Winning the print media Grand prix at the 1993 Cannes festival, the ad opened a path that has been followed by many Brazilian agencies since.

Additional example of simplicity is the advertisement that announces the Botero explosion at the Sao Paulo Modern Art Museum. It defines, with humour, the most striking characteristic of this Colombian artist, who only portrays enormous and obese characters.

Sparing joints and articulation is one of the most vital benefit of a tennis shoe for those who run every day. The Mizuno band is acknowledged by the Brazilian Orthopedic Society as having the most efficient impact- absorption system in the market.

So, imagining a tennis shoe between bones seems to be the simplest solution for the ad. That is how it was with VW as well. Discovering a double check and using it to support the German brand’s dedication to the total quality of its products seemed extremely obvious to us.

Jean Marie Dru, then president of the Cannes Festival, commented on some of the pieces that had won several Lions. “Many creative directors in France would never approve them. They are too simple. The French choose complexity.”

I’m an enthusiant of what is simple, of the search for hidden obvious, of the Japanese Hai Kai, of the exercise of reduction, of the capacity for the synthesis that Picasso had towards the end of his life. In answer to someone who criticizes that it was very easy to draw one of his bulles with a trace, he simply said: “I took fifty years to do it.”