Great marketers aren't....(the power of simplicity)
Today I had the privilege of meeting George McDonald, founder of The Doe Fund. Anyone who lives in New York knows The Doe Fund, www.doe.org, - you see their guys in blue jumpsuits out cleaning our streets all over the city. It is a fantastically impressive organization that empowers thousands and thousands of homeless, disadvantaged and ignored men by employing them (and supporting them) to do work that all the rest of us lucky, privileged, spoiled folks get to benefit directly from.
He and Harriet live on East 84th Street, not far from East 86th, which used to be one of the filthiest stretches on the Upper East Side. "This is what we're going to do," he said. "We're going to take the money we have left and we're going to buy really nice uniforms and we're going to put the guys on 86th Street and they're going to clean it up every day and the community is going to want to support us." And that's exactly what happened. "
George recounts that everyone thought he was mad but he went ahead anyway. And the growth of The Doe Fund took off from that moment and continues to this day. People living in the city just saw those guys in their blue uniforms, cleaning and sweeping the streets where they lived - and they asked who they were, where they were from - and then they heard their stories, and they were inspired to support The Doe Fund.
What struck me is that this is marketing genius. By someone who is not a marketer, has had no marketing training, would not even think of themselves as a marketer. Lots of the professional marketers I get to work with never come up with marketing ideas this good. It is an idea that is lateral and fresh and practical. It made The Doe Fund's work and mission instantly noticeable, high-profile, empathetic and compelling. It neutralized any cynical suspicions that homeless people are irresponsible and/or work-shy; it made The Doe Fund's previously invisible work tangible and literally impossible to ignore - if you lived in certain areas of the city you would actually bump into them; and it transformed the donor-recipient relationship into a mutually-reinforcing win-win (donor gets clean living environment, recipient gets work/empowerment.)
But most of all, I'm struck by how simple the idea was. And I think this might be its core genius. Maybe that's the quality missing from so many attempts at marketing in business today: a brutally clear, focused and uncomplicated core idea about how to solve a problem. An idea that may be extremely complex to execute and sustain, but which at its heart is sharp and clean and un-muddled. Almost all the great marketing ideas I've admired over the years - Nike+/DeBeers' Right Hand Rings/The Tap Project/the invention of the Mr Clean Magic Eraser (and don't knock it before you've tried it: the magic eraser is genius. Truly. The name is accurate - it is magic....) etc etc - all of them, are fundamentally simple in concept.
I remember years ago, during a particularly tough period of BBH New York's life, Nigel Bogle being in the office hearing our tales of challenge and stress. In response, he bestowed lots of encouragement and advice, but he concluded with what he said was - in his experience - the most important thing to remember when circumstances are difficult: 'keep it simple'. His point was (and I paraphrase) "The more complicated the situation, the more confusing the issues, the more you need to make things simple. Simplify. Focus on what really matters and don't get distracted by anything else."
I think at the root of the power of simplicity is a fundamental human truth: the desire for ease and convenience, the constant human desire to find a path of least effort, least complexity. We like simple. Simple demands little of us and leaves time for other stuff. So whether you're a potential buyer of a product, or a client buying an agency's services: the power of simple can be compelling. I'm going to try to improve my marketing contribution in 2012 by making it simpler.



