Sophie Langton.
The start of the year is a magical time. Most who return to work early find themselves buoyed with proactivity and the luxury of a comparatively empty diary. I celebrated this time by ferociously devouring the long-awaited study from Oxford’s Saïd Business School.
It promised to challenge the foundational tenets of marketing effectiveness, and I was motivated by a misplaced confidence in my ability to understand something called ‘Bayesian Gamma Hurdle Regression’ modelling.
The Bayesian bits might have gone over my head, but the overall findings lit up my brain like the glittery decorative candy canes that lingered well past-due in our office atrium. I started WhatsApp chains, Teams chats and email threads eschewing the recommendation for channel ‘archetypes’ in fear of competitive homogeneity.
I was hooked. I needed more. I started following the industry thought leaders on social media, trawling through the comment sections. Nothing gave me a greater high than the thrill of seeing tags like, ‘Byron Sharp commented on this’.
But, of course, that high was short-lived. Far out beyond the point of erudite explorations and deep in the wilderness of excessive emoji usage, I was confronted by a source of great evil. It is those who insist on putting a ‘hat on a hat’.
No, it isn’t a fashion faux pas. It’s the wretchedness of conflation. To put a hat on a hat is to take one thing that is already effective by itself, and layer on something else that is distracting and/or unnecessary. And boy, don’t we just love doing this in our industry?! The behaviour permeates across adland.
There are those who subscribe to the laws of Ehrenberg-Bass but choose to employ audience segmentation – completely undermining the need/ability to reach all category buyers. Consider the supposedly single-minded campaign built in a multi-tiered ecosystem, complete with competing ‘key’ objectives and often lacking holistic measurement.
Or how about the presentations that layer frameworks upon frameworks? And don’t get me started on the small budget campaigns executed across too many channels or with too many messages. The list goes on...
We’re all guilty of overcomplicating things. It’s called the complexity bias, and it’s hard-coded in our brains. That bias makes us overly suspicious of simple things, perceiving them as ‘too easy’. Complexity is regarded with superiority. Consequently, we falsely observe it as a marker of cleverness.
Let’s be real though, there’s nothing clever about being complex. It only leads to confusion and a failure to execute. So, as we move back into the realities of briefs, pitches and presentations, I implore you to heed my calls, because complexity grows unchecked.
What to do then?
Break down the fundamental tenets of your strategy. Re-read the theory. Don’t layer non-complementary ideas on top of each other. Overcome the compulsion to bury your audience in detail. Challenge your complexity bias and accept that sometimes the simplest approach is often the best.
Simply put, stop putting a hat on a hat!
Sophie Langton, Chief Planning & Connections Officer, Spark Foundry Australia