Simplify! = Improve

There was at one time, such a solid comrade, called him (by the way, and his name is still) Ogilvy. We can say that he, in fact, made an advertisement, such as it was until recently. He strenuously proposed one important thesis, which is now being used less and less. No need to try to reduce the advertising text to mininum - if you think that advertising should have 607 words, let them be there.



And his advertising had, so to speak, some popularity. What did Ogilvy do? It's simple - he took the illustration, invented a headline that attracted attention, and under it was placed the text. Good, interesting, serious text. Not two sentences and not three. I repeat, it was this approach that made of him what we know about his agency now.
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However, dozens of "serious research" and hundreds of other experiments conducted by a bunch of clever people, it turns out, have proven that a person needs a "short, memorable, catchy slogan." May be so. Nobody, however, did not mention that all these studies only emphasize that a person is naturally lazy and uses energy economically.

And what do we see now, according to the results of the experiments? We see a huge number of here and there printed, written, shown and spoken slogans. “Manage the dream”, “Shifting expectations”, “Everything is brilliant. Just "etc. Etc. We see a myriad of short advertising messages, similar to each other in their bright personality, more than garden snails.

We have practically nothing can extract from the advertising text - only the phone, the site and one or two assurances that "we are better than any competitors." What many have long ceased to believe. Well, yes, this little car has smart wipers, and this one is beautiful, like a shark in the mating dance period. We mumble irritably that the ads overcame us without making any difference in the advertisers. We booze that everyone got these insignificant advertising phrases, multi-colored wrappers on the same nonsense.
And this, of course, is understandable.

But what happens when we (many of us) stumble upon more or less decent advertising, at least a little substantive and reasoned? This is especially true for newspapers and magazines. And we begin to read through the word, quickly pushing towards the end to find out, “Oh yes, we really are better than all competitors.” And often we quit reading altogether and move on. Marketers of all stripes continually shout that it is necessary to do “shorter, faster, brighter”, forgetting that it is through their efforts that laziness saves energy in a person upward.

Do not fall behind and web designers and other creatives. Simplify, make it clearer, less text, clearer pictures, etc. Does the button seem a bit odd? To hell, a person can get lost in three pines. Some difficult to remember the username and password? Let's take down, here's an OpenID. Can't remember him too? Cookie to help you. Does serious text bore you? But you pictures in bulk, to have fun reading.

Yes, this is partly correct. Many official documents can be conveyed to people in two or three words. Many sites have a messy and complicated navigation system. Most advertising texts advertise simple products that do not require detailed descriptions. But gentlemen! Is it really so important to help a person think, work with brains?

It is impossible to say that marketers take away the desire to think with brains from a person - the person himself will give the opportunity to think, and even with joy, and also pay extra, just to strain less! Just what it will lead to, or rather, already leads? In addition, it’s harder and harder for us to perceive something, at least as far as difficult, because you can find another text where everything will be easier. Another product, where it is clearly and clearly stated - “we are better” and there are no these boring descriptions of advantages.

Make a simple, intuitive interface? Be prepared for the fact that in six months your users will call your site difficult and boring. Could you reduce the UIF advertising to two paragraphs? Soon we will have to invent a slogan instead of a complex text, such as “Our UIF is not a myth!”.

Someone seemed complicated and inconvenient system of cataloging information and tags appeared. No, no, I'm not at all against tags. Because now, instead of complex, official, and boring catalog systems, we have such a fun tag cloud. True, if their number exceeds a couple hundred, there is almost impossible to find anything. But it does not matter - after all, a person will not search for anything in such a quantity of text anyway, we have taken care of this. Here's a little idea - we introduce cloudy sky meta tags. Group the tags into metatags and get a simple and funny picture again. Oh, and in fact they can be (only for the convenience of users) slightly streamlined. Well, let's say, to make it possible to build them into convenient rows. And placed under the metatags. Although ... Something like a folder structure, is not it?

It is said that the simplest solutions in technology are the most complex. This is true. There is, however, a similar Murphy law, that the simplest solution is not necessarily the most correct. And in this case, simplifying, we try not to make a person think, strain his head. And he gladly does it.

What will we come to, gentlemen?