Complexity is the Refuge of the Unsure!

There’s a multitude of brand guru’s, arbiters, guardians, stewards, harbingers and market leaders throughout retail, manufacturing and services that stand and deliver so well-who mesmerize an audience on the right approach, the right foundation and navigation to build a world class brand. Of course the quiddity of CMO leadership is the resultant market grade inclusive to achieved product forecasts, market share, price elasticity and above the line profit attainment. All while revenue forecasts catalyzed by a CEO’s hope and aspiration for competitive market push spotlights the bogey for CFO measurement.

Opportunity in the pecuniary language of overachieving product pull makes it very real, very measurable at the last three of the sale in brick or click retail aisles. And yet through this entire process, pre and post to brand/product investments we ask one simple question to amplify and accelerate competitive advantage: “what is the most impactful and profitable way to influence a consumers purchase decision-their brand loyalty?”

Whether you are in sales, marketing or engineering the right answer to this most important question may, sadly, be your company’s wrong answer. Perhaps some believe accelerating market opportunity is heavily based upon potent social media engagements. Others believe accelerating and uniting CRM and SCRM data for one-to-one marketing will ensure hunted results. Many believe targeted broadcast, narrowcast and micro-cast ambient marketing programs is Job One, to ensure the most profitable congress to fuel purchase decisions and brand loyalty. Some even profess products must be over burdened with robust, perhaps complex, features to ensure competitive advantage, consumer preference.

‘Decision Simplicity’

There is a lucid counter-argument that professes and demands “simple” in product design. From this perspective, simply designed products outmuscle all other marketing methodologies with respect to gaining and asserting market dominance. According to the Harvard Business Review (May 2012), the most important and potent ingredient for any brand marketer to stimulate hungry purchase preference is “decision simplicity.” Consumers want in any brand they engage with, simple products-simple usability with smartly burnished, highly inviting brand distinction. Although consumers are web-and mobile-savvy, they are also jammed for personal and business time. And this deficit of time means consumers are a “mile wide and only an inch deep” in their desire to study, engage and compare brands and products. The more complicated the message, products, apps, usability and manuals the more complicated it becomes to influence brand engagement, preference and competitive advantage. Simple delivers clarity, creates urgency and delivers enlisting market penetration.

Our late great brand and product arbiter Steve Jobs (truly the “father” of simple mesmerizing design) amplified the importance of simple in making and taking market opportunity. Steve said: “That’s been one of my mantras: focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”

As globally proven by Apple yesterday today and surely tomorrow, feature and cosmetics subtraction, removing unneeded layers of complexity in product design is harder than simple addition. It also garners tectonic price and profit elasticity. Apple proves that simple works in brand design, product usability, eye popping cosmetics and even packaging. There are other august, highly profitable local and global brands to example that built their formidable positions through simple, sexy and mesmerizing design.

As examples, think Nest, TiVo, Fitbit, Verizon, Bose, Google, Monster, Netflix, BMW, AT&T, Rolex, Coke, Starbucks, LG and Samsung. Many of their same-day competitors fell into the trap of providing more buttons, more triggers, more steps, more overhead in order to compete from behind. Product and brand disciplines over time through next-gen competitive offerings should become easier and simpler not more complex. Complexity in product engineering is the refuge of the unsure. Unsure as in not understanding relevant consumer demand. Unsure, as in not understanding just how to persuade and finesse consumer attention, interest, conviction and desire through simplicity, not complexity. Global powerhouse brands like Apple are unerring in their quest for the refulgent power of simple as their competitive weapon of choice. Each of these world class companies define their market leadership through one influential, most effective brand driver: “Simple.”

Simple product disciplines, design, cosmetics, engineering and packaging are the cynosure of best-of-breed brand and product leadership. They are also the primary drivers and influencers of what we all work for so excessively in business: profit. These highlighted, first-in-competitive-class companies offer varying forms of simple, sexy and mesmerizing products. Simple, yet impactful products which protract and fuel ultimate brand value, market influence and consumer infatuation.

In addition, these companies share muscle-commonality through their robust and sustainable market pricing. Each brand has earned the right through brand and product simplicity to ask for a few more pennies for their products than their closest competitors. These savvy companies emphatically prove to all competitors through market dominance that simplicity in product design smartly morphs and matures into formidable consumer influence, engagement, preference and purchase without deep discounts, without brand peers.

If complexity is the refuge of the unsure, then simplicity is the greater refuge of the very sure, the very successful.

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