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Success through the Power of Simplicity

August 23, 2015

Success through the Power of Simplicity

At the BrandHook London office we have been grappling with the new and complex world of Performance Marketing and Search Engine Optimisation to assist our clients in solving business issues of their own. It was a completely new area for us, so a trip to the Performance Marketing Insights Conference in Berlin seemed to be an ideal opportunity to gain the ultimate knowledge we needed to guide our research and give us the solutions we were after.

Or that’s what we thought!

On arrival at the event we were overwhelmed – bombarded with yet more complexity. There were words we had never heard of such and obtuse acronyms; plus whole sectors that we’d never come across ever before. None of it made sense and it certainly didn’t give us the answers we were looking for. That is until we came across a Keynote address by Ken Segall called ‘Success Through the Power of Simplicity’ – the perfect antidote to the confusing world of Performance Marketing!

Ken worked as Creative Director at Apple for 12 years alongside Steve Jobs – developing the ‘Think Differently’ campaign, which re-launched the brand in the 1990s, and coming up with the ‘i’ in iPod, iPhone and iPad. His presentation was all about how Apple’s success is ultimately linked to Steve Jobs’ (and consequently the companies’) obsession with simplicity, despite being immersed in the complex world of Technology.

This message of simplicity is also one of the key teachings at the ‘Apple University’ – they show students the Pablo Picasso drawings above to illustrate how a detailed image can be portrayed equally as well with a few simple lines – the essence of the bull is still there throughout. When Apple launched the first iPod, for example, they didn’t tell people that it had a 5GB drive, firewire ports and a click-wheel interface in the marketing campaign. Instead they advertised the product with the simple words ‘1000 songs in your pocket’. A sentence that meant something amazing to people whose idea of music on the go was listening to one CD containing 12 songs via a portable Discman!

As well as giving us some excellent new business examples and marketing ideas to take away, Ken’s presentation told us exactly what we needed to hear – simplicity is the key to success. No matter how complex the world around you becomes, people prefer simplicity.

At BrandHook, we have always prided ourselves on simplicity – our brand promise is to ‘deliver absolute clarity along every step of a brand’s journey’. But, when faced with a complex and complicated industry, it’s easy to became caught up in the detail.

Bringing this one simple fact back to London we applied it to our research approach, took a huge step back, and, using one of our tried and tested proprietary tools, managed to distil exactly what we needed. A clear and actionable solution to the problem our client had come to us with – something that they could take away and apply to their complex business model to give them the outcome they were looking for. We didn’t need to come up with a complex new algorithm to deal with this unfamiliar and complicated world – what we already had at our fingertips was just as effective and powerful and could be used across any industry, no matter how complex the subject.

Keep it simple.

 


Foreword: The following is a guest blog written by Olga Dumitriu from our obscenely creative friends over at Truly Deeply. For the original blog and/or more information on their agency, check out their website here. Australians of all ages come together to celebrate Bonds 100th birthday with song and dance. Turning 100 is kind of a big deal for Continue reading

The 11-part Closing the Gap podcast series (in partnership with CMO) brings to life issues that most marketers are now facing – the gap between how consumers are behaving and what business is delivering. Over the series, we’ll explore the seven key ways consumer behaviour has changed and what it means for marketers. To listen Continue reading

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