Too Clever By Half.

I've become increasingly annoyed by marketers' desire to overcomplicate everything. A recent case in point occurred after a presentation by an advertising industry veteran to whom I had introduced myself. We were joined by a guy who professed to having a background in neurology and was fascinated by how MRI scans could be utilised to better understand the brain and be used to create better advertising.

Notwithstanding the fact that no decent neuroscientist would make any claim about what an MRI tells us (other than the part of the brain that is active at the time of the scan), I hardly think better advertising should be on the list of things that folllow from any such understanding. To his credit, the veteran made the salient point that the brain and the mind are not the same thing.

Why the aversion to keeping it simple. The first port of call is to place yourself in the customer's position. And that's not so hard because we are all customers - maybe not of the product/service you're selling, but of some thing similar. And let us always remember that customers neither work in agencies nor live the agency lifestyle.

Bottom line - as mentioned in this lovely documentary about two successful lyricists fitting their very different words to the same tune - it's better to be right than clever.