Interesting, or at least specific

Marketing and advertising have two great enemies: indifference and complexity.

(And budgets, but let’s not go there for now.)

Indifference is the hidden enemy that never presents itself, even when the work is out there. We’re usually terrified of hate and disagreement because they make us look bad. What if someone hates this idea, that campaign, that product? On the flip side, at least they’re something that gives us direction on what went wrong. It’s something that helps us improve next time. When someone’s indifferent, they just don’t give a shit. That tells us nothing.

Complexity is the hidden enemy that presents itself upon discussion. It shows up when many points of view collide. This then makes it hard to define priorities that everyone can agree on. Which in itself dilutes our ‘single-minded propositions’. Which in turn makes it harder to develop something great that people will understand. Which might create indifference.

There are ways to tackle this. I think it’s a question of knowing your principles and sticking to them. Knowing what to sacrifice because there are no perfect solutions. Eric Schmidt summarised it better than I ever could in ‘How Google Works’:

You want the answers to be interesting or at least specific.

I think this echoes something that Richard Huntington wrote last year. He said that “it is vital to be interesting but merely important to be right”. Interesting answers are more likely to be right. Right answers will not always be interesting. It’s worth reflecting on this to fight these and other enemies. Like our tendency to mix formats and ideas. Or our addiction to predicting the future by generalising about which things will die. Or our habit to speak in platitudes. Just search for ‘it’s all about’ and ‘marketing’ on Twitter and you’ll know what I mean.

The world is too complex for us to have all the right answers, all the time. So let’s at least have some interesting and specific ones. Being interesting helps you overcome indifference. Being specific requires you to get to the point in a simple way. Both sound like solid ways to get this job done.