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Marketing Talk - Simple Not Dumb (1 Viewer)

Joe Bryant

Joe Bryant

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Seth Godin is my favorite business writer. And it's not close. I bought a 6 tape AUDIO CASSETTE from him 20 years ago that formed tons of my thoughts on business and marketing. In a world of macho entrepreneurs preaching the grind 24/7 mentality scrambling to grab "attention share" at any cost, Godin goes the other way. 

Wondering what you guys think of this. And also, do you have business writers / bloggers you like? Who are they?

Godin has a daily thing where he posts something short each day.

Here's today's

Toward dumber

If you want to reach more people, if you're measuring audience size, then the mantra of the last twenty years has been simple: make it dumber.

Use clickbait headlines. Short sentences. Obvious ideas. Little nuance. Don't make people uncomfortable or ask them to stretch. Remind them that they were right all along. Generate a smile or a bit of indignation. Most of all, dumb it down.

And it works.

For a while.

And then someone comes along who figures out how to take your version of dumbness and go further than you were willing to go. Until everything becomes the National Enquirer.

While this downward cycle of dumb continues to be passed from hand to hand, a few people headed in the other direction. Measuring not the size of the audience, but their engagement, their commitment and the change that was possible.

This is an upward cycle, a slow one, a journey worth going on.

Dumber is an intentional act, a selfish trade for mass. It requires us to hold something back, to avoid creating any discomfort, to fail to teach. Dumber always works in the short run, but not in the long run.

Don't confuse dumber with simpler. Simpler removes the unnecessary and creates a better outcome as a result. But dumber does little but create noise.

Everyone owns a media company now. Even media companies. And with that ownership comes a choice, a choice about the people we serve, the words we use and the change we seek to make.

It's only a race to the bottom if we let it be one.
Click to expand...

 
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Yet you penned a manifesto to make your point about how the forum is going to be.

 
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Limp Ditka said:
Yet you penned a manifesto to make your point about how the forum is going to be.
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;)   Sometimes simple takes a lot of words.

On the real point though - Godin is most known for writing books. He's not saying everything has to be a couple paragraphs. It just doesn't have to be a race to the bottom. 

 
Joe Bryant said:
;)   Sometimes simple takes a lot of words.

On the real point though - Godin is most known for writing books. He's not saying everything has to be a couple paragraphs. It just doesn't have to be a race to the bottom. 
Click to expand...
Also, to be fair, this is today's advice. If only you knew then what you know now

- Please don't use aliases. CLICK NOW TO SEE THE OTHER 6 THINGS YOU SHOULDNT BE DOING!!!'

 
Not much to disagree with there. Unfortunately it seems like there's a lot of room for "dumber" in the marketing landscape though, especially in the digital space. Not every product or service requires engagement and commitment from its customer. Couple that fact with the limited real estate that digital marketers have to work with, and I'm not sure this dynamic (which is years in the making at this point, if not a decade) is going to change much.

 
The biggest mistake digital marketers do in my opinion is not immediately deliver the content that you drive your customers to in the first place.

CLICK THIS is then followed by a landing page that has 27 pop up ads or scrolling banners and other assorted annoyances before the content is actually delivered.

 
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I'm not convinced that "making it dumber" is a thing.  Perhaps I need some examples. 

"Simpler" certainly makes sense in marketing though.

 
Juxtatarot said:
I'm not convinced that "making it dumber" is a thing.  Perhaps I need some examples. 

"Simpler" certainly makes sense in marketing though.
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Hi Jux,

I think mainly it's stuff like he says here. "Use clickbait headlines. Short sentences. Obvious ideas. Little nuance. Don't make people uncomfortable or ask them to stretch. Remind them that they were right all along. Generate a smile or a bit of indignation."

We see it with headlines a lot. Or teaser tags with the "you won't believe what she looks like now!" type stuff. 

 
Joe Bryant said:
True. But I think for many, it can be more of a focus thing. How that plays out well I think in many cases is a "Keep the main thing the main thing" mentality. 
Click to expand...
Focus is important- I can definitely agree with that. In teaching, I see that mistake a lot. Say a teacher wants to teach about how write out a redox reactions in chemistry and in the process of explaining it, they get off on some tangent about how redox reactions are used, the etymology of the words or some story from a college chem class. Then they wonder why half the class isn't able to explain how to write out the redox reactions. The etymology and the ways redox reactions are used is certainly important to understanding the the big picture, but if the objective at the moment is teaching people how to do one specific thing, stick to that one specific thing. 

 
Joe Bryant said:
Hi Jux,

I think mainly it's stuff like he says here. "Use clickbait headlines. Short sentences. Obvious ideas. Little nuance. Don't make people uncomfortable or ask them to stretch. Remind them that they were right all along. Generate a smile or a bit of indignation."

We see it with headlines a lot. Or teaser tags with the "you won't believe what she looks like now!" type stuff. 
Click to expand...
Where I'm confused is I don't get the distinction between "dumber" and "simpler" in most of those: "short sentences", "obvious ideas", "little nuance".

Totally agree on the teaser tags.  I'd classify a lot of those as deceiving.  Maybe that's what he means.

 
Juxtatarot said:
Where I'm confused is I don't get the distinction between "dumber" and "simpler" in most of those: "short sentences", "obvious ideas", "little nuance".

Totally agree on the teaser tags.  I'd classify a lot of those as deceiving.  Maybe that's what he means.
Click to expand...
I think you're right. It's more the simple deception thing or exploiting psychology type stuff. There's direct and clear. I'd call that more simple. Where I'd call it "dumber" is exploiting the fear of missing out stuff and going for the cheap shot or tease to pull people in. 

On radio, that might look like Shock Jock stuff or some of the ESPN shows where people just yell at each other with a pretty girl as the "moderator". And it's a balance. It doesn't have to be boring C-SPAN. But it doesn't have to be FOX of MSNBC either. 

 
Simplicity is way undervalued in marketing. It's so tempting to want to say everything about how amazing your products are and why everyone needs to buy them. It's very hard to have the discipline to keep it simple and focus on the absolute most important things, and to focus that message on a tightly defined and possibly small audience.

I work in marketing and I struggle with this constantly.

 
s

Juxtatarot said:
Where I'm confused is I don't get the distinction between "dumber" and "simpler" in most of those: "short sentences", "obvious ideas", "little nuance".

Totally agree on the teaser tags.  I'd classify a lot of those as deceiving.  Maybe that's what he means.
Click to expand...
Dumb is something lacking any real insight, anything new or challenging. Dumb is something that has no value other than to be consumed. Think Beavis and Butthead, Transformers movies or that book Snookie from the Jersey Shore wrote. Simple just means that it's to the point (as Joe said it well- focused). It's not trying to confuse or be grand, it has a meaningful message and it delivers it directly. Think The Sun Also Rises, The Bicycle Thieves or Taxi. I can describe all of those very quickly: Young adults drink and talk post WW1 Europe, a guy and his kid look for a stolen bike, a bunch of failures work at a cab company. However simple those works of art were, there was something very profound and moving about them. They stick with people.

Imaginos by Blue Oyster Cult is a very complex but very dumb concept album about an explorer that meets Aztec Indians and then travels through time to kill Frankestein and then uses magic to start WW1. 

Yesterday is a very  simple song by the Beatles that speaks to people of many ages and places, it sticks with you and perfectly captures the feelings of nostalgia, regret, disappointment and longing. 

 
Ilov80s said:
s

Dumb is something lacking any real insight, anything new or challenging. Dumb is something that has no value other than to be consumed. Think Beavis and Butthead, Transformers movies or that book Snookie from the Jersey Shore wrote. Simple just means that it's to the point (as Joe said it well- focused). It's not trying to confuse or be grand, it has a meaningful message and it delivers it directly. Think The Sun Also Rises, The Bicycle Thieves or Taxi. I can describe all of those very quickly: Young adults drink and talk post WW1 Europe, a guy and his kid look for a stolen bike, a bunch of failures work at a cab company. However simple those works of art were, there was something very profound and moving about them. They stick with people.

Imaginos by Blue Oyster Cult is a very complex but very dumb concept album about an explorer that meets Aztec Indians and then travels through time to kill Frankestein and then uses magic to start WW1. 

Yesterday is a very  simple song by the Beatles that speaks to people of many ages and places, it sticks with you and perfectly captures the feelings of nostalgia, regret, disappointment and longing. 
Click to expand...
Listen to lov80s

 
Clickbait is a huge pet peeve of mine. Love the folks who use FB comments  "spoil" the clickbait with synopsis of whats inside (usually disappointing/misleading). 

My approach toward marketing varies from case to case, but generally speaking I agree that simplicity is best. What do you do best? How does it benefit your customer? How can you most effectively let them know that?

I've spent much of my career trying to get employers/clients to stop trying to cram as much info/details as possible into communications pieces or ads. There is a time and place for that stuff, but it's rare. Establish the basic concept effectively and the customer will come to you for the rest of the story. 

If everything is "important", then nothing is "important".... or, If you're trying to say everything, then you're saying nothing.  

 

 
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[icon] said:
Clickbait is a huge pet peeve of mine. Love the folks who use FB comments  "spoil" the clickbait with synopsis of whats inside (usually disappointing/misleading). 

My approach toward marketing varies from case to case, but generally speaking I agree that simplicity is best. What do you do best. How does it benefit your customer. How can you most effectively let them know that.

I've spent much of my career trying to get employers/clients to stop trying to cram as much info/details as possible into communications pieces or ads. There is a time and place for that stuff, but it's rare. Establish the basic concept effectively and the customer will come to you for the rest of the story. 

 
Click to expand...
Great point there that applies to marketing, dating and almost any human interaction. Hungry people make the best shoppers. If you give everything away, there becomes no reason for people to come back to want to learn more. 

 
Ilov80s said:
[icon] said:
Clickbait is a huge pet peeve of mine. Love the folks who use FB comments  "spoil" the clickbait with synopsis of whats inside (usually disappointing/misleading). 

My approach toward marketing varies from case to case, but generally speaking I agree that simplicity is best. What do you do best. How does it benefit your customer. How can you most effectively let them know that.

I've spent much of my career trying to get employers/clients to stop trying to cram as much info/details as possible into communications pieces or ads. There is a time and place for that stuff, but it's rare. Establish the basic concept effectively and the customer will come to you for the rest of the story. 

 
Click to expand...
Great point there that applies to marketing, dating and almost any human interaction. Hungry people make the best shoppers. If you give everything away, there becomes no reason for people to come back to want to learn more. 
Click to expand...
I do the bolded WAY too much in my own work- become pedantic about explaining things. I end up writing paragraphs to explain in detail where a sentence will most often do just fine.

 
El Floppo said:
I do the bolded WAY too much in my own work- become pedantic about explaining things. I end up writing paragraphs to explain in detail where a sentence will most often do just fine.
Click to expand...
I'm right there with you. I get wrapped up in long ### emails and look back at them and mock myself. 

 
[icon] said:
El Floppo said:
I do the bolded WAY too much in my own work- become pedantic about explaining things. I end up writing paragraphs to explain in detail where a sentence will most often do just fine.
Click to expand...
I'm right there with you. I get wrapped up in long ### emails and look back at them and mock myself. 
Click to expand...
and part of what makes it worse is that I'm sending these to clients or my boss- all of whom are only looking at these on their phones. if they have to even scroll, it ain't happening.

 
Ilov80s said:
Focus is important- I can definitely agree with that. In teaching, I see that mistake a lot. Say a teacher wants to teach about how write out a redox reactions in chemistry and in the process of explaining it, they get off on some tangent about how redox reactions are used, the etymology of the words or some story from a college chem class. Then they wonder why half the class isn't able to explain how to write out the redox reactions. The etymology and the ways redox reactions are used is certainly important to understanding the the big picture, but if the objective at the moment is teaching people how to do one specific thing, stick to that one specific thing. 
Click to expand...
ORPchat activated. Pros and Cons of the Nernst equation, go.

 
The problem with simple is that this is the internet age. There are a billion others out there competing for time...being simple doesn't help you differentiate from the noise.

 
A lot of Seth's stuff is "be genuine". Most of the marketing advice I follow (and give - I kind of do this for a living) follows the same. Trends die, and there's almost nothing less effective, long term, than "me too". 

 
Joe Bryant said:
I think mainly it's stuff like he says here. "Use clickbait headlines. Short sentences. Obvious ideas. Little nuance. Don't make people uncomfortable or ask them to stretch. Remind them that they were right all along. Generate a smile or a bit of indignation."

We see it with headlines a lot. Or teaser tags with the "you won't believe what she looks like now!" type stuff.
Click to expand...

This Underrated RB Should Continue To Roll
Make Sure You're Starting This Underrated WR
 
And then someone comes along who figures out how to take your version of dumbness and go further than you were willing to go. Until everything becomes the National Enquirer.
Click to expand...
Holy crap was this prophetic, looking back at it 5 years later. If anything 'The National Enquirer' underestimated the trend by quite a lot.
 
Topes said:
Joe Bryant said:
I think mainly it's stuff like he says here. "Use clickbait headlines. Short sentences. Obvious ideas. Little nuance. Don't make people uncomfortable or ask them to stretch. Remind them that they were right all along. Generate a smile or a bit of indignation."

We see it with headlines a lot. Or teaser tags with the "you won't believe what she looks like now!" type stuff.
Click to expand...

This Underrated RB Should Continue To Roll
Make Sure You're Starting This Underrated WR
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on what you mean there?

And pulling back up a 5+ year-old post?

For both those headlines, we answered the question in opening paragraph and gave the reader the piece of information we feel is valuable. Or did you mean something else?
 
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Dinsy Ejotuz said:
Holy crap was this prophetic, looking back at it 5 years later. If anything 'The National Enquirer' underestimated the trend by quite a lot.
Click to expand...

Agreed. It's a challenge as people try to grab attention. The grabbing attention is relatively easy. It's the keeping attention that's more difficult. And that comes in my opinion by consistently bringing value.
 
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