However, when pushed, usually from more than a layman’s perspective, and usually about “which bit of advertising” and what makes the company I work for different from the lots of other companies that (don’t just) do advertising, I often confess to having said, ‘We’re in the business of making complex things simple.’ As that’s what marketing communications people do, isn’t it, especially agencies. They take lots of complicated and sometimes conflicting information, then using data and insight, they find ways to communicate this in a simple, accessible, impactful and creative way.

Simple.

We all know the inherent contradiction in this as anyone who has tried to do it will tell you: Making complicated things simple is complicated! B2B marketers often have to deal with hugely complicated subject matters, complicated products, complicated routes to markets, complicated decision-making units. In fact, that’s why so many definitions of how B2B differs from B2C revolve around the word “complexity.” My clients’ products range from membrane filtration systems to IT-enabled financial information. The one thing that ties them together is complexity and more importantly, the need for simple and compelling communications.

Unfortunately, there is a temptation to hide behind this complexity and use it as an excuse for poor communications. I believe that agencies are often guilty of two key errors when operating in complex markets. One is thinking the answer is to focus on market-sector knowledge at the expense of all else, and the other is to be a faux management consultant rather than a marketing communications expert.

On top of this, there is a tendency to continue to complicate the complicated, with models, jargon, acronyms and diagrams. So often I read and reread whole paragraphs from trade articles, marketing materials, briefs or presentations that could have been written in half the words and which would be so much simpler without a layer of jargon. Often these become “the emperor’s new clothes,” in that people don’t want to challenge such puffery without feeling exposed. I sat through a presentation once where the term “real estate” was repeatedly used. It was only afterward that I had the courage to ask a close colleague what that was and be told that it’s just a part of a Web page.

In the UK, we have a campaign for simple English that champions simple, straightforward language, and I think that as marketers, whatever our sub-discipline, we have a duty to make sure we guard against complexity for complexity’s sake and occasionally sense-check our business or department’s output. We’ve all used a gratuitous diagram or model in a presentation, but there is a reason why there are probably only two or three that marketers can remember, like the BCG “box”, as they are simple and straightforward: two axes, four boxes, four strategies.

It’s even more important as we communicate across languages and cultures in our businesses. There was a time about two decades ago when the debate was what would be the next global business language: German, Spanish or Esperanto. Things have panned out a little differently, but I don’t believe that Anglo-U.S. business jargon will stand the test of time!

by Danny Turnbull
General Manager – gyro Manchester

Cross posted at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Follow Danny on Twitter @gyrohsr_danny

An outcome of all our attempts to achieve a safe society is that we in fact often get the very opposite results to those we intended.

Being an adult is fun but tough and it hurts both physically and emotionally. Still, we hide this fact from our kids. And since we forbid our kids to, say, ride a bike without a helmet, cross the road without parents, hold a knife, walk through the park, talk to strangers, watch TV for more than 30 minutes etc, we also trick them into constantly feeling safe. We lull them into the belief that nothing hurts, and that nothing is tough or bad out there. Is this really good for them?

The same people are saying that, as a result, we are now in danger of having an entire generation to never become adults. Today these youngsters are coming to the psychiatric emergency wards for stress symptoms way before they even start to work. Why is that? How can you be that stressed when you are young and without real responsibilities? How come this never happened before? For instance – the medical term of being “stressed out” is that you have to work for many years (think it was 10) every day and long hours and with no rest whatsoever. And as said – we still get youngsters claiming they are stressed out before they have even worked one single day in their life.

The reason is simple; we have not prepared them for real life. For life as adults. We over-protect them on their way to becoming adults and once they begin to realize that it’s a tough world we all live in, and that it does hurt a lot…they simply cannot cope with the mental pressure.

So, what has all of this to do with today’s topic? Well, we all read the stories in the news about the current global financial situation, with many companies needing to cut back. In Sweden, now is the time to take market share – especially since some of our laws will make things even more difficult than they already are for these struggling companies.

And there is one law that is a great example of the many stupid rules that attempt to protect us, but actually result in the opposite. In my mind at least, this is very much related to the above.

You decide: In Sweden if a company is experiencing a shortage of work and needs to reduce its size, we have a law that protects the staff with seniority over qualification/skill/expertise. SENIORITY OVER EXPERTISE. Yes, you heard it right. Good for the senior people at least you might think. But I say it´s a very unfortunate law for everyone. Including the very same senior people the law tries to protect. Here is how I see it in a very simplified and shortened version: When companies are being forced to get rid of the young, vibrant, hungry and often more skilled people (and ones that you just hand picked with great care) as opposed to the ones that have been at the company the longest, you take away the edge of your company. And if you are a high performance service organization – you take away the edge of the very product you are selling, as well as getting rid of the part you have most recently invested in building up. By doing so, you obviously lose quality and alongside losing quality, it is inevitable that you will lose revenue and eventually the all-important clients. Once you begin to lose clients, you are in a very unfortunate downward spiral… And so it begins again. You have to fire some more people, starting again with the people last in…

This means that even the senior staff that initially thought they were safe will eventually have to go. And with them, potentially the entire company!

The worst part of this is that the ‘market value’ of the senior people is often lower than that of the less experienced. This is due to the fact that Sweden has made them slower, less hungry, less competitive, more comfortable and safe. And in business that is never a good thing. In business we always have to outperform the others, we always have to outsmart our competitors and even our colleagues, we have to run, be proactive and not reactive, break barriers, coming up with the smartest solutions… I think you get my point by now.

I will not run my life or my company based on safety alone. Just being safe is boring, by being safe you will never expand, safety alone will not take you anywhere, being safe will not break any barriers, safe ideas are rarely the winning ideas, safe is not a feeling that will drive a company. Or an industry. And definitely not a society.

As said above, now IS the time to take market shares. The best talents are now available, the clients are looking for stable organizations and the downward spiral has started for those in trouble.

Life is fun and tough. Not safe.

Claës af Buren
Chief Executive
GyroHSR Scandinavia