AdamWohl.com

Simple, But Novel

It’s not an oxymoron.  It’s just an endangered species.  But every once in a while it’s spotted in the wild.  And in advertising, it’s gold.  Some people think that with emerging technologies and platforms, it’s impossible to achieve success while being simple — that concepts and ideas have to be complicated to reach and engage today’s sophisticated audiences.  Personally, I think that’s a bunch of shit.  I’ll get back to this thought in a few minutes.

When you attend the Newhouse School at Syracuse University, in addition to your major, you must select a minor or concentration — seemingly to round out your specialized education with something more universal.  In my case, a television/radio/film writing major was complimented with a psychology minor.  My film courses taught me about criticism and history of the medium along with practical applications for story structure and what to do when getting behind the camera.  And my humanities and electives were fun and in many cases enlightening.  But I can confidently say I learned more, and have applied more from my studies of psychology than any of the others.  

I first made that realization as I started writing and selling film and television scripts in L.A.  Painting characters that are either familiar to viewers or more complex comes easier to someone who has spent time understanding human behavior.

I find psychology even more vital to what I do now.  Retro-color me nerd (I swear I wasn’t one), but I remember scouring the shelves of the SU bookstore for various psych books — even ones for classes I didn’t take, just to learn more about people.  I’d always believed knowing more about a situation, challenge, or even a conversation ahead of time made me better prepared.  Carrying that belief over, knowing how people act and behave under certain situations can prepare you in exactly the same way.  And in advertising it can inspire some of the best ideas.  Understanding how people have behaved in the past, how and why they act the way they do now, and predicting how they might react in the future is the foundation of advertising — it’s an industry completely rooted in psychology, and there’s no more important underlying facet to prepare us for what we do.

I’ve talked about right and left brain thinkers.  I’ll try to appeal to both about psychology’s importance: To the right brainers: Psychology teaches you why people stop and read one thing over another and what feelings have been tapped that lead to the actions they take.  To the lefties: Psychology shows, in black and white facts, how past behavior can predict future behavior.

It’s all psychology: predicting behavior, so we can disrupt and entice, rather than alienate.  Seduce, rather than estrange.  We are always trying make our targets feel something: shock, empathy, compassion, envy, association, whatever.  Ultimately, we want the target to feel comfortable enough to make a decision and take action, whether the “target” is a brand selecting our agency in a review, or consumers deciding to buy the product or service we’re pushing.

PSYCHOLOGY PERVADES EVERYTHING

Strategists/Account Execs: will tell you briefs are built upon the psychological profile of target demographic.

Art Directors: will profess that people’s general mood can determine what color will garner the desired response.

 Copywriters: will remind you that the ultimate goal is to appeal to a relatable, social truth.

Techs: will warn you that if UI/UX is frustrating, you’ve put the demo in bad mood from the start.

Planners: will advise that where and when we find people to sell to has everything to do with their mood/mindset at the time.

Now I know this all sounds rudimentary, and to a degree it is.  It’s - - wait for it - - SIMPLE.  (Remember?  That’s what I was talking about, before I lulled you into a near coma about psychology.)  Understanding psychology is understanding the SIMPLE emotions that fuel the decisions people make all day, every day.  These emotions inspire our creative and technological ideas.  And because these same emotions are being affected by our ideas, the ideas themselves should be SIMPLE.  Simple emotions, tapped at the beginning and catered to at the end.  It’s the in-between that’s complicated.  How?  Well, these simple emotions are attached to complex people, with complicated lives and problems.

AND

The way in which these simple(and hopefully novel) ideas engage the simple emotions of complex people are through a bevy of media and platforms that grow more complex by the day.   Sounds a little messy, but it isn’t.   He’s a diagram of a two-way funnel:

Again:

• Simple emotions [that inspire simple, creative or technological novel ideas]

 • Complex people [who own those simple emotions]

 • Complex channels/platforms [populated by these complex people]

• Simple ideas [carried via the complex channels to cater to the simple emotions of complex people.

“Simple, but novel” is not only possible, it’s vital to agency survival.

Simple can be disruptive and engage consumers for a few seconds, but novel will keep the ultimate idea in their heads.  Simple can get people to download an app, but usefulness and a proper user experience making it novel will get people to use the app and spread its novelty.

I’m sure someone will ask, what about social truth campaigns - - the foundation of the work of the last ten years at Crispin.  Isn’t that simple?  I’d argue the concepts of the social truth of Crispin’s campaigns of the last decade were simple; the executions made them novel.

In my mind, a good campaign is grounded in a truth and fits the audience like a comfortable, old shirt.  One grounded in truth that pushes the audience to think and feel in new ways isn’t good, it’s great.