Picture a client presentation – you go in with one strong idea, you deliver it with conviction, everyone loves it, no concerns, it gets a seamless and enthusiastic green light. So far so great, right? While in the moment this might feel like success (in fact, it definitely does), my gut reaction to this scenario would be “I’ve played it absolutely safe”. It would make me question whether I had taken the work to the depth it needed; whether I had sufficiently stress tested it to ensure it was really saying something. What I’ve got here is merely a concept that people love on instinct – but if it doesn’t spark further thought, questions or indeed healthy critique, can it actually lead to something meaningful? Or does it just sound great in the room?
Far too often, creative thought is being boiled down to a singular lightbulb idea. The more people’s attention spans are fragmented through content churn and across platforms, the more we need a simple (implied: impactful) thought to cut through. I increasingly notice this pressure – client- and agency-side. Simplify work, so that it can be understood by someone with a very small capacity to take stuff in – and in the process, skim off the complexity that’s required for the idea to land in the real world.
This mindset might be useful at a campaign level – many a classic ad campaign was built on one key insight, delivered with creative flair. But when I worked for M&C Saatchi with its famous guiding principle of ‘Brutal simplicity of thought’, those words always jarred with the brand builder in me. Thought is complex, and building a brand must be based on more than simplicity. Otherwise, it will never resonate in all the ways that it needs to, to create the value you want. This race to simplicity does a disservice to those looking to build lasting brands.
Complexity isn’t a sign of creative failure. It’s a necessity when helping brands or organisations unpick layered and nuanced issues and commit to solving against these issues in the long term.
Embrace human messiness
Take audiences for example. So often brands resort to overly simplistic segmentation – either a rudimentary sketch of their audience profiles that reveals very little, or a persona so over-characterised it no longer represents a group of individual people. Both of these are so limiting, because if we want to create brands for customers that add meaning to their lives, we have to build for the messiness of the individual. If you invest in the ongoing research to understand your consumers as full complex selves, then you will understand that one simple idea, no matter how strong, will not serve them all.
Same with stakeholder engagement. In brand building you deal with complex problems, and we all know that involving as many relevant stakeholders as possible is the right thing to do. But the implication of that is that you speak to everyone to find a solution that suits all. This is what I’m nervous about. Yes, you should speak to as many people as you can. But in doing so, your aim cannot be an oversimplified solution that will satiate everyone, it’s just not realistic.
The truly valuable solution is often complex, nuanced, has different perspectives to it. It can, and should, look different to different people – and ultimately will not serve the priorities of every stakeholder you have engaged. A soundbite that promises a solution that looks and feels the same to everyone is both unrealistic and misleading. It does a disservice to all those invested in the success of the work. While that’s harder to get your head round – and explain to your client – it is how you do justice to all the conversations you’ve had.
From simplicity to accessibility
Of course, this mindset is much more resource intensive. To continually be talking to your audience, to understand their messiness, requires time and commitment. Equally, crafting solutions that meet stakeholder insight with nuance and flexibility rather than a one-idea-fits-all, needs a certain kind of bravery and conviction.
For me, delivering complex strategy all boils down to two complementary priorities: depth and clarity. Modern brand building needs to be bold enough to go deep, to interrogate, research and explore. It needs to put in the work upfront, look in different places and discover different answers, to arrive at truly nuanced and detail-driven strategy.
That then needs to be communicated with clarity, to those that need to understand the strategy or interact with the brand. This is not about explaining it in an overly simplistic way and converting strategy into a tagline that, although memorable, loses the depth and poeticism of its thinking.
It is about finding a line of communication that is accessible and will resonate with them. For example, don’t immediately resort to the explanatory slide deck, but maybe produce a micro-site. Or if you want to educate a lot of people about your brand, maybe don’t come up with a workshop, but design a learning curriculum. We can all try harder to find valuable and exciting ways for people to engage with our work so that they can be educated on it, and therefore really understand and own it.
Accessibility is the best Trojan horse for complexity, so finding the most creative ways to help people understand what your brand work is about is crucial.
As ambitious creative consultants, it’s our job to push our clients into places they wouldn’t go otherwise – and to give them more than a set of brand guidelines at the end of it. So, dare to embrace the friction of complexity, because it’s through the layers, the nuance, and the messiness that truly transformative brand work is born.
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Luke Bell is Strategy Director at brand and business consultancy Wiedemann Lampe, who consult on cultural impact at a governmental level; amplify institutions including Louvre Abu Dhabi, British Library and New York State Parks; and guide large-scale businesses through crucial moments of transformation through brand, such as IMI Media and the transition from Etisalat to e&.
Picture a client presentation – you go in with one strong idea, you deliver it with conviction, everyone loves it, no concerns, it gets a seamless and enthusiastic green light. So far so great, right? While in the moment this might feel like success (in fact, it definitely does), my gut reaction to this scenario would be “I’ve played it absolutely safe”. It would make me question whether I had taken the work to the depth it needed; whether I had sufficiently stress tested it to ensure it was really saying something. What I’ve got here is merely a concept that people love on instinct – but if it doesn’t spark further thought, questions or indeed healthy critique, can it actually lead to something meaningful? Or does it just sound great in the room?
Far too often, creative thought is being boiled down to a singular lightbulb idea. The more people’s attention spans are fragmented through content churn and across platforms, the more we need a simple (implied: impactful) thought to cut through. I increasingly notice this pressure – client- and agency-side. Simplify work, so that it can be understood by someone with a very small capacity to take stuff in – and in the process, skim off the complexity that’s required for the idea to land in the real world.
This mindset might be useful at a campaign level – many a classic ad campaign was built on one key insight, delivered with creative flair. But when I worked for M&C Saatchi with its famous guiding principle of ‘Brutal simplicity of thought’, those words always jarred with the brand builder in me. Thought is complex, and building a brand must be based on more than simplicity. Otherwise, it will never resonate in all the ways that it needs to, to create the value you want. This race to simplicity does a disservice to those looking to build lasting brands.
Complexity isn’t a sign of creative failure. It’s a necessity when helping brands or organisations unpick layered and nuanced issues and commit to solving against these issues in the long term.
Embrace human messiness
Take audiences for example. So often brands resort to overly simplistic segmentation – either a rudimentary sketch of their audience profiles that reveals very little, or a persona so over-characterised it no longer represents a group of individual people. Both of these are so limiting, because if we want to create brands for customers that add meaning to their lives, we have to build for the messiness of the individual. If you invest in the ongoing research to understand your consumers as full complex selves, then you will understand that one simple idea, no matter how strong, will not serve them all.
Same with stakeholder engagement. In brand building you deal with complex problems, and we all know that involving as many relevant stakeholders as possible is the right thing to do. But the implication of that is that you speak to everyone to find a solution that suits all. This is what I’m nervous about. Yes, you should speak to as many people as you can. But in doing so, your aim cannot be an oversimplified solution that will satiate everyone, it’s just not realistic.
The truly valuable solution is often complex, nuanced, has different perspectives to it. It can, and should, look different to different people – and ultimately will not serve the priorities of every stakeholder you have engaged. A soundbite that promises a solution that looks and feels the same to everyone is both unrealistic and misleading. It does a disservice to all those invested in the success of the work. While that’s harder to get your head round – and explain to your client – it is how you do justice to all the conversations you’ve had.
From simplicity to accessibility
Of course, this mindset is much more resource intensive. To continually be talking to your audience, to understand their messiness, requires time and commitment. Equally, crafting solutions that meet stakeholder insight with nuance and flexibility rather than a one-idea-fits-all, needs a certain kind of bravery and conviction.
For me, delivering complex strategy all boils down to two complementary priorities: depth and clarity. Modern brand building needs to be bold enough to go deep, to interrogate, research and explore. It needs to put in the work upfront, look in different places and discover different answers, to arrive at truly nuanced and detail-driven strategy.
That then needs to be communicated with clarity, to those that need to understand the strategy or interact with the brand. This is not about explaining it in an overly simplistic way and converting strategy into a tagline that, although memorable, loses the depth and poeticism of its thinking.
It is about finding a line of communication that is accessible and will resonate with them. For example, don’t immediately resort to the explanatory slide deck, but maybe produce a micro-site. Or if you want to educate a lot of people about your brand, maybe don’t come up with a workshop, but design a learning curriculum. We can all try harder to find valuable and exciting ways for people to engage with our work so that they can be educated on it, and therefore really understand and own it.
Accessibility is the best Trojan horse for complexity, so finding the most creative ways to help people understand what your brand work is about is crucial.
As ambitious creative consultants, it’s our job to push our clients into places they wouldn’t go otherwise – and to give them more than a set of brand guidelines at the end of it. So, dare to embrace the friction of complexity, because it’s through the layers, the nuance, and the messiness that truly transformative brand work is born.
Luke Bell is Strategy Director at brand and business consultancy Wiedemann Lampe, who consult on cultural impact at a governmental level; amplify institutions including Louvre Abu Dhabi, British Library and New York State Parks; and guide large-scale businesses through crucial moments of transformation through brand, such as IMI Media and the transition from Etisalat to e&.
Further Reading
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