Kiss the principle

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Every 1 out of 5 clients offer you a brief and end it with the acronym: K.I.S.S.. Likely they add words like result, target, goal. and ROI. “OMG – There we go again, headache!”

Reading K.I.S.S. in the brief used to put me off … “Excuse me! You don’t want my fantastic new and never-seen-before ideas? You don’t want me to be truly creative and rock the consumer’s world?” It feels like the worst repulsive thing to tell a creative director to keep it simple and STUPID. When a brief said explicitly K.I.S.S. I replied: “my ass. “I didn’t want the job. Simply because I didn’t believe K.I.S.S. would lead to better results. I believe in Engagement in Discovery. I want to treat the consumer as smart, able to think, and digest a message.

Maybe it’s age or weariness. Since a year or so I’m following K.I.S.S. as well without rebellion. Two mandatory reasons:

Budget redesign

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Social media, search engine optimization, e-mail marketing, adwords,……… What is the impact on your business? But another question is, What impact does it have on the allocation of funds within your budget? Just adding people to use the new technologies in your favor is probably not an option. Something has to give. In most organizations the amount that can be invested in marketing communication and in other marketing responsibilities (research, product development) will not be allowed to grow. What will the marketing department have to give up in order to invest in the future? You can’t have it all mister marketing manager!

Again the necessity of spending a lot of attention on accountability of everything marketing is investing money on will be key to deciding on what to keep and what to cut or spend less on. A redistribution of funds, for people and the rest, is necessary.

Try to define for your own organization what is the least successful investment and swap it for new, more innovative ways of creating value and letting people know about it.

Gert-Jan Scheers

Tag Marketing

With tagging you could describe anything as anything and search for items in a fashion that is more in line with the way people really look for things. How to split an atom

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If you can’t explain Tagging from a users point of view, no company would see the use of it. It’ll only sound like a lot of work and a nerd thing. My approach to explain is based on this car salesman. A client enters his show room and without looking around he starts asking. “I’m looking for a nice car. Do you have one that is affordable in a 2.0 liters series?” The salesman instantly knows which Citroen matches. The client continues: “Does that come with that beautiful soft grey leather and a navigator?” The client is still standing at the door. The salesman shows three photo’s of his collection. “These three match your criteria.” he replies. It turns out to be less affordable but the client accepts, picks one and wants like a test drive. Sold.

If all information online would be offered like this you wouldn’t need to search, read, or browse. You would be able to instantly find your way to your information. You also throw away large and complex websites. You need nothing but one page with a search field. It only requires some skill to systematically add tags to your content. But I think even a child could do that. It’s a matter of will.

Tags can be used with semantic ordering your information. The question for the 2.0 liter simply pushes away all smaller options and brings the bigger ones to the front. It’s a natural way to determine what to offer. Delicious example of using tags.

Tagging also makes marketing a bit easier. You don’t have to be honest in giving tags. Just be careful not to push it too far since the client is not totally stupid. Don’t tag the Citroen C5 navigator as ‘user friendly’.