Want to Be the Cleverest Person in the Room? Here’s How to Be the Dumbest

By Sophie Meadows, Creative Strategist at The Frameworks

People working in accounts are bubbly extroverts. Creatives are aloof child-geniuses. And Strategists are introverts in glasses; the cleverest people in the room.

Or so I was told when I started working in advertising.

I was worried. Until then having perfect eyesight had felt like a blessing, would it now be my downfall? And what about my conviction that thinking you’re the cleverest person in any room guarantees the opposite?

I thought about buying a pair of glasses without prescription lenses. A plan quickly thwarted by my starting salary in advertising. Cubitts was out.

Instead, I reflected on the role of the Strategist. Strategists untangle complex client problems to produce a clear direction from which creative ideas can flow. So how best to reduce complexity? Be intentionally dumb. Ask “Why?”. A lot. The optimal number of times is five, apparently.

Untangling complexity

At The Frameworks, most of our clients work in technology or finance. They are operating complex business models with sophisticated and often unique offers.

We unlock their briefs by infiltrating their technical, jargon-saturated landscapes and finding a clear path back out. Not immediately understanding their challenges is an essential part of the job.

Here are some tools that I have found useful in the complex-to-simple process.

Shrink, Hide, Embody

Strategy is as much about what is not included as what is.

What is included? In every project there are business challenges, audience insights and product benefits to contend with. Our goal is to get to the bottom of what isn’t included and answer the question at the heart of strategy: what is the problem you are trying to solve?

The solution is to reduce and prioritise so you can make a clear decision. Technologist and designer John Maeda explores models for navigating complexity in The Laws of Simplicity (2006). His SHE model – Shrink, Hide, Embody – is especially useful.

First, shrink down the list of possibilities. Then, reviewing what remains, hide the complexity; articulate what is essential in the simplest way possible. Finally, embody this by thinking about how it can be made manifest, either physically or verbally. The model is born from product design, but it has many applications elsewhere.

Recently, we’ve been redesigning our employee value proposition at The Frameworks. We workshopped a list of all the things we offer our people, in terms of culture, resources and benefits. We made a shortlist of the non-negotiable attributes (Shrink): “respect for the individual”, “diverse workstreams” and “access to clients and training”.

We distilled these ideas (Hide) and found that the commonality between them is “culture and challenges that inspire us to do our best”. We chose to articulate this human truth (Embody) within the creative brief as “let us bring out the best in you”, which will form the foundation for our big idea and resulting execution.

Following this process forces prioritisation and direction. At the end you’re left with a simple, clear idea to build on.

The chimp, the human and the computer

Communicating in B2B is no different from B2C: however important rational benefits are, emotional ones resonate more.

In The Chimp Paradox (2012) Professor Steve Peters uses analogies to illustrate how and why we think, feel, and behave the way we do. He describes three components in the brain: the chimp (primal drives), the human (learned, rational responses) and the computer (points of reference for past experiences).

This model provides a useful lens for assessing how you evaluate ideas, and how your audience might receive messaging.

Should you feed the chimp? Can you appeal to the human? Is there an opportunity to tap into the computer?

We recently redesigned the brand for an insurance group’s charity. Our key audience was the people who the charity exists to support: people in and around the business applying for funding.

Reading through the funding applications, I was surprised by how raw they were. People were applying on behalf of loved ones, and their applications were heartfelt and moving. They weren’t driven by their “human”, or a desire to appear to do good. They were driven by something more primitive: love, grief and hope. This gave us permission to talk to “the chimp” by pouring these emotions into the brand manifesto, in a celebration of bravery and vulnerability.

Strip it right back

How do you get to the bottom of complex topics? For a start, don’t create more complexity by asking smart questions and using convoluted language. Instead, ask your client to talk to you as if they’re talking to a child.

We used this exercise in a client workshop as part of a product naming brief. The products in question are the epitome of “niche”: radio frequency power components that play a vital role in the way cancer treatment machines work. We needed to strip back the technical language to understand the single most compelling and distinctive thing about each product.

We asked the engineers to describe the products in no more than two sentences. Words with more than three syllables were banned. We then had them highlight keywords that were evocative or were an active verb.

We simplified these descriptions of why each product mattered to their audience and was different from their competitors’ and translated them into a naming theme. The result? Distinctive, memorable product names all linked to their integral value.

Showing the way

I know we’ve been successful when our clients have their “ah ha” moment: seeing their business in a different light. But guiding them to that point is only part of the journey. They need to see the value in continuing along the new path.  This requires conviction, which is most easily achieved by presenting simple, clear choices.

I have found these tried and tested processes to be invaluable for finding simplicity and clarity amid complexity. And if nothing else works, there’s always Cubitts.

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