About Simplexity

Because simple is simply simple

There is one big trend that I would like to talk about. It's the ongoing momentum of terms like easy simply or simplicity in claims and copies of present campaigns.

"Because simple is simply simple" is the claim of the German mobile service provider Simyo - is there any option to integrate even more simplicity in a five-word claim? 

Former Simplicity Campaign of the brand Simyo by Aimaq von Lobenstein

It's one of these powerful notions that seem to magically hit the Zeitgeist. Think about Skoda's "Simply clever", Philipp's "Sense and Simplicity"or about the predominance of the value simplicity in the Windows 8 campaign - and I'm sure you already have a good number of other examples right now in your head. Can this feeling be supported by numbers, too? - Yes!

The German claim-database Slogans.de provides an annually analysis that spotlight's the most frequently used advertising terms of the year. I asked the database for Simplicity and this is what I found:

What we see is a rise of the usage in the sixties, a subsequent establishing of the term and another increase in the present - nothing more to say.

Complexity - the other side of the coin

But why is it so important for advertising people to tell the world that a product is simple? First simple answer: Because in most cases products became more complex in the last years.

Remember Simyo: It's not a coincident that a mobile company is the heaviest-user of the German equivalent einfach I've found so far. Looking for a new provider last year, it took several days of investigation, excel-calculation and personal weighting for me to come to a good decision - two month after I could have easily changed again as new options were emerging.

Another facet of the same issue: The pure number of new product-inventions has been enormous for the last decade. The german institute for brands and patents speaks of about 60.000-80.000 new registered brands per annum since the year 2000.

Hence the congenial bipolar-partner of "Simplicity" is "New":

The new New

New is the all-time-classic of the modern marketing. Creating new products and features is the essential mechanism of our progress- and growth-centred economy-system and it's already well established in our brains (link). 

New was wonderful for tooth-paste, packet soup or the automatic car in the 60ies and 70ies. Innovation was quite ostensive back in the days of immature markets. Now Colgate Total has about 9 functions, about half of them is not conceivable for a normal person. "New" often means substantial more complex in the year 2013.

Naming the issue: low- and high-involvement 

Speaking in marketing-slang: More and more product- and service-purchasements that used to be non-brainers require a high-involvement by now. Caused by the digitization in the 70ies and 80ies, technology-driven inventions reached a new abstract level; thinking about big data or the internet of things, it's obvious that the complexity behind innovations will be even higher in future. And consumers don't like this feeling of fuzziness. But they also don't have the time and resources to deal with it.

If a new product is perceived as too complex, people don't even have any interest in googling it. Smart Homes for example, one of my current topics, are not searched at all.

In fact the tendency to move more and more products into the top-involvement category even causes an
increasing value of consumer-frustration as several investigations have shown, too (link). If we have to read heavy copies, investigate further information or read dozens of reviews for everything - just to have the feeling of doing a right purchase - we will be a very frustrated species in future. 

Let's see the model in the classical marketing-spreadsheet:

Therefore the rise of simplicity is our desperate approach to move complex products back to the low-involvement area and cover the unloved complexity behind it. It's a more system-compatible way of solving the problem if we think about "just leave everything out" as another logical option.

Smart-home: a great example for the fail of fake simplicity

As briefly mentioned above: I've worked quite a lot in the smart-home category the last months. Actually the aim of all this smart-automation-high-tech-bla-bla-systems is to make the simple things of our daily life even easier. If you spend some time googling "the automated house" you can find some illustrations of early 1900 of self-filling-fridges, house robots and self-controlled candles. In fact these mechanisms are currently getting viable. 

The problem: 90% of present systems have simplicity as one of their top three topics, but before you can enjoy the ease of self-controlling devices, you have to crunch through the complexity of an immature market and dozens of other related obstacles. And people are aware of it.

For many the digital revolution has failed: In most cases our  lives didn't become easier or more carefree. It created new frustration potential and a feeling of helplessness.

In 2012 the German bluechips RWE and mobilcom-debitel started big TV-campaigns to get people engaged, but already failed to introduce the category at all, not even speaking about its possibilities.
Hence the product category isn't prominent at all, even if around 80% of Germans like the idea. My investigations have shown that even the tech-savvy group of early adopters presently fails to understand
the category.

Communication  is only one ingredient of the simplicity-mix

One positive exception is the smart-heating company tado (link). What is so nice about these guys? - They don't spam the term simplicity - they have the idea of it deep in their mindset.

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• the product aims to do exactly one thing: control your heating depending on your current location
• ability to test the product: you don't have to buy the system, but you're allowed to test it with a monthly fee
• communication-wise they don't spam their features, but show real use-cases in emotional life-situations. 

This combination leaves a feeling of perceivable innovation that shows: That's the product, that's my personal benefit. Okay - I don't understand the algorithm behind the app, but I know what it's doing for me.

Let's take care of the term simplicity!

There are still so many aspects to think about, but one thing is clear: If we want to face the tension between our limited brain- and commitment-capacity, the growing complexity of specialized, fragmented products and our wish to still somehow understand them, there is no way around thinking about simplicity. 

In advertising we have to take care of this precious word and start to stop burning it. Instead we have to find new ways beside the uncovered drop of single buzzwords.

Kind regards,

Jonathan, Berlin

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