Part of the job of marketing is to make the complex simple and understandable, while retaining the essential core of the proposition.
As Einstein said, ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, no simpler’.
This is the same logic used by ‘Occam’s Razor’, which summarised tells us that the best theory is the simplest one that still explains all the facts. Arthur Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes was referring to both these when he said: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’
However, there is a point beyond which the process of simplification becomes corrupted by the selective choice of facts and variables, of leaving out those that might deliver a conclusion different to the one that is preordained, and preferred
People are not stupid, but sometimes they are lazy, do not have the technical knowledge to fully understand, or their cognitive capacity is consumed just by living, and a host of other mental barricades.
However, that is no excuse to oversimplify the complex when the complex is important, or to be sufficiently selective with the facts to be grossly misleading.
Successful long-term marketing depends on the truth, expediency may be attractive in the short term, but is poison over a longer period.
Our current PM, labelled ‘Scotty from marketing’ by that most reverential publication, the ‘Betoota Advocate’ has gone too far.
He has been conducting a masterclass in oversimplification on one hand, and obscurification on the other, for political purposes. It has been going on for some time now, and it is time to stop.
To be fair, ‘Scotty’ is not alone in the political sphere, (and I use the word political in its broadest sense), but he does set a very high bar.
We, the electorate, are not stupid. We may be disengaged, cynical, selfish, and mostly put our immediate family and community above the greater good, but treating us as stupid is a bridge too far.
It is easy to go too far in simplifying a message, which then is read as patronising, self-interested, and with little relationship with the facts. This erodes credibility, and therefore the ability to get anything done by any means other than leveraging institutional power.
Header cartoon courtesy Tom Gauld in New Scientist magazine.
