The Paradox of Simplicity

George Orwell famously said “Never use a long word where a short one will do.” A suitably simple quote on simplicity.

The heart of Orwell’s statement is a guiding principle in our early engagements with new clients, where we often find ourselves leading firms away from the pitfalls of overcomplicating their video marketing.

Whether it’s the method, the message, or the medium, there seems to be a gravitational pull — felt especially strongly when working with video, and especially so in the highly-regulated industries that we operate within — towards making things more complicated and harder than they need to be.

Simplicity is hard

I've recently finished reading 'Simple Marketing for Smart People' by Billy Broas. I like his thoughts on how 'smart' people [in this context, people operating within their area of expertise] overcomplicate things almost by accident. His argument is they do this for no other reason than they're able to, and it's almost muscle memory.

Billy offers a great illustration of what goes wrong, and why it’s important to help firms avoid it:

When you’re a beer-brewing aficionado, it blows your mind that somebody can go up to a bar and just ask for “a beer”. As an expert in brewing, your brain has turned one category — beer — into thousands of sub categories — IPAs, Stouts, Pilsners and so on.

We work with clients in highly-regulated industries. Naturally, this involves working with some exceptionally sharp thinkers, who’ve got a deep grasp of their subject matter and can spot nuances that most others miss. Getting into the details isn’t just habitual, it’s part of what makes them so effective in their roles.

But, as Billy says, in marketing — and especially where video is involved, with its boundless capacity for immersive and highly creative output — the “mindset you have [in your day-to-day role] is not the same mindset you want to bring to the marketplace.”

The Paradox of Simplicity

During the diagnostic and prescriptive areas of our process, a lot of work goes into helping clients keep things as simple as possible. We want you to avoid getting stuck in the weeds of over-production or falling into the trap of trying to say everything at once.

But there's a small catch here. Real simplicity requires a deep understanding of an area and all its complexities in order to distil it into its most basic form.

Complexity born out of simplicity is bad, but creating simplicity born out of complexity is one of the most powerful tools humans have.

As Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, said: “Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

What does this all mean?

Accordingly, for new clients, we like to start from with complexity and our Diagnostic Process is designed around attempting to understand as much as possible about the product or service we're working with. For the highly-regulated firms we specialise in working with — encompassing health and veterinary care, education, technology and finance — this can be difficult but it's worth it.

From there, our aim is always to distil things down into their most simplest form, to offer an antidote to overcomplication for overcomplication’s sake, and prescribe a suitable solution.

To return to Orwell’s brilliant quote at the beginning of this article, our own version might be ‘Never use a complex video when a simple one does the job.’ Admittedly, his version was a little more poetic...

At Bear Video we help highly-regulated firms earn trust & communicate complex concepts with clarity, whilst avoiding compliance headaches. If anything in this article resonated, feel free to get in touch to discuss.