Why do people add unnecessary complexity to design solutions? Yet complex solutions often fail to get the results your technology brand, your marketing, your message is working so hard for!

The guys discuss possible reasoning for adding unnecessary complexity like Cognitive Bias, False Consensus Effect, and the Curse of Knowledge, while also sharing experiences and suggestions on how to simplify your branding, design and marketing…it’s actually quite simple! 

 00:00:00
Massimo
You're saying the Mona Lisa was actually stolen. 

 00:00:02
Shawn
Yeah. It was stolen. It was stolen. Like the newspapers reported on it, everybody was talking about it. It was like, Oh wow. A lot of people didn't get a chance to see this painting. Right. They would go to the loo and see the two hooks were there and they were like, Oh, I'll take a pictures of it. So yeah. It created this huge hype for this painting. It was returned, it was like one of the most popular attractions. Yeah. That's an amazing, which is crunches. Pretty insane. Anybody hear about that? Yeah, it was very cool. Jeez that Leonardo DaVinci was a talented dude, man. 

 00:00:47
Massimo
And he was a very talented dude. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, right? That's Leonardo DaVinci. That's sexy. That is sexy. I don't know. There's something nice to do with that. 

 00:01:00
Shawn
There is, I totally would agree with she's. 

 00:01:02
Massimo
Let me tell you, I need more simple in my that. I do. I need more simple in my life. 

 00:01:09
Shawn
Could we all use that? That would be, Oh, Calgon, take me away. Oh my God. That's funny. 

 00:01:22
Massimo
We've got many clients, we do many jobs and we had to do a simple job for not a client. Yeah. But not the actual marketing department. It was, it was at an internal department and they said to marketing, can you help us out? So they reached out to the agency and these are not marketers. Right. And they needed help. They just need something simple. They need an email banner. They put at the bottom of their emails. Right. So just to advertise their departments. Yeah. Of course, we came up with simple concept, whatever, and they came back with over 250 words of bullet points, an intro sentence, and a call to action that they wanted in this email banner, wait, let me clarify. It's not an email banner. It's an email signature banner. We're all telling them, look, you've got to simplify this one message people. 

 00:02:12
Massimo
Aren't going to stop and read your whole banner on the bottom of your email. We've, we're literally, almost all pleading with them. Just nothing to do with it. He go, it's just like, listen, here's a good tagline. Here's a second one, single, sentence that sums it all up. Just do it, know it, we feel that it doesn't quite capture what it is that we want. What they're experiencing follow the fear of leaving out something they're experiencing it all. It's just, you see this so much and it's just, it's now this thing that's supposed to be small and sexy. Almost like a subliminal call to action is now turned into this whole, I don't know. I don't even know. Right. It kind of goes back to like, what, why are they so damn scared of a solution? Do what I mean? Instead of simplest, instead of, being targeted and OnPoint and giving one message, they have thrown everything in there and it's, it worries me and it worries, obviously the other leads in there, granted it's just an internal, thing, but haven't, we see this all the time. 

 00:03:18
Massimo
Yeah. We see this, with customers, we see this with competitors, everybody is scared of simplicity. Again, it's, that's the part like we said earlier, the inner narrative and she says, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. I think people think that simplicity's is the same as being a simpleton. 

 00:03:42
Shawn
I need to know what to do spring free works together. ? Right Like it's. 

 00:03:50
Massimo
And a baffle is medium. Like again, I don't get it. I don't get why the, like they're there, people are terrified to simplify their brand or their messaging or their marketing, because the reality is people aren't going to remember no everything. Oh yeah. 

 00:04:05
Shawn
They're not, dude. Those banners are what like six 50 by 650 pixels. 

 00:04:12
Massimo
They're supposed to only be, sure. One 30, one 50, even 105, it's supposed to be for a single message. When you jam so much in there it's and this is just us, just one example of, I mean, go anywhere, go to. 

 00:04:28
Shawn
Your supermarket. We'll look at the packaging. Yes. 

 00:04:30
Massimo
Go online. Look at websites, look at Yahoo's website for. 

 00:04:34
Shawn
God's sake. ? Right Like. 

 00:04:37
Massimo
Simple, simple design. Simplistic does not exist there. Right. Honestly, the companies that you see, the companies that succeed, the companies that people remember, the strongest brands have one simple, easy to remember message. And that's what they focus on. That's honestly, that's something that we struggle with all the time, because, we deal with a lot of tech companies and we deal with a lot of very complex, technology and services and ideas. We try to simplify them all into something that is human that's relatable, and that people will remember and understand, but people are terrified to go down this road. Right. Honestly, it's just, again, it's please just remember one thing that's all you gotta do is just remember that one thing. I don't know. I mean, I don't know, dude, I don't know. It's it's a daily battle for us. 

 00:05:33
Shawn
It is. It really is. It's, and it's, so it's such a different, like, I, I don't understand how, why people think, and I, I guess only maybe it's because they're so close to it. Do you think maybe that's what it is. I don't know, 

 00:05:48
Massimo
Suffer from maybe the curse of knowledge and they feel that the it's much more comforting. 

 00:05:53
Shawn
Plus if I don't explain this, they will get with this part. I got to finish it off with this part, right? It's they're talking in a different language. 

 00:06:01
Massimo
They need to have their language out there for everybody else to understand. The reality is that's not what this is about. This is about simplifying the deliverable, simplifying the message. It's not seeing that. What you're developing is simple. Chances are, it's not, it. Chances are, it's very common. I mean, the world is a very complex place. 

 00:06:19
Shawn
If you're in the tech field, it's probably different. 

 00:06:24
Massimo
Honestly, people don't realize though, that being simple is really common. Yes. Wow. I hit a really high tire, but it's taking you to get a little more, is really complex, but it's true. Being simple, being truly simple is really complex to do. Yes. Whether it's an app, whether it's a brand, whether it's messaging, it's not that easy. We're not talking about, being a minimalist here. That's not what this is about. This simplicity doesn't equal minimalism. Minimalism is a better form. It's about, keeping a lot of space and natural colors around and easy shapes. We're not talking about Mary quantifying your house here. Like that's not what this is. Simplicity is the absence of unnecessary stuff. It's like reducing the complexity of what it is that you're working on by honestly, focusing in on what's important. Being simple is a really long task. It's a long process and it involves a lot of user testing. 

 00:07:32
Massimo
It it, and honestly like cutting stuff out, that just isn't important. Yes. Right. Otherwise you end up with something that looks like a remote control with a thousand buttons. You have no idea what to do or scientific calculators. Right. God knows. I mean, you look at the simple calculators necessary and you have the giant complex. Wow. This is a horrible thing. It's a horrible example. 

 00:07:57
Shawn
Well, again, that's an engineer kind of mindset, engineer mindset. Maybe this is what we're talking about here. Maybe this is the kind of thing that we're dealing with. We're dealing with the engineers trying to translate what they think is, well, 

 00:08:10
Massimo
It's true. Engineers do suffer from, the curse of knowledge, meaning that, they're so damn smart and so close to it that they can't explain in layman's terms. 

 00:08:20
Shawn
Layman's terms. ? Right What the, what the product actually does. Cause. 

 00:08:24
Massimo
We'll go in and talk about details that will just fly over people's heads. They're so close to it. They're so damn smart that they don't know how to dumb it down. That's why they need people like us to do that for them. Right. But even worse. A lot of times as marketers we'll get complex, why? Because they don't understand what the hell the engineers are talking about either. They then use all these extra complicated words, ? And that's even worse because marketers know how to get into people's heads. If they're spewing out calls, crap, wow. Everybody's screwed. Yeah. Right. Really that's actually something called complexity bias and it's like that, right? It's the belief that complex solutions are better than simple ones, ? And honestly it's like, Oh no. It's people, always want complexity over a simple approach to something which is bullshit. They think that, if something is simpler, easier, faster, cheaper to get to market, it can't be right. 

 00:09:18
Massimo
That that solution is wrong. We need to make it more complex. We need to make the messaging more complex. We need to, otherwise people won't believe that it's a legitimate product because it's quality product. It's a, it's a technical product, which is a horrible approach. Yeah yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Again a lot of the great tech products out there are very simple with their messaging. They're very targeted. Yes. You don't, you don't have to give me all this crap jargon, assuming that, people will believe that, but a lot of people do and they take advantage of that, ? so that's why curse those marketers. Right. But that's just insecurity. Yeah. That's just them not having a flipping clue what's going on. Right. They don't know the technology themselves. They're going to start using all these buzzwords jargon, all this tech jargon thinking that they're using it. 

 00:10:05
Massimo
Right. They don't have to, they're not being, it's not engineers who are listening to their tech jargon. Right. It's end-users who sadly sometimes have no idea what they're talking about either. So they're like, well, it sounds complicated. So yeah. 

 00:10:18
Speaker 2
It must be right. It must be good. Yeah. Oh, I hate that too. 

 00:10:23
Massimo
There's also something else called cognitive bias. There's another word. Cause lots in that, all these biases. Right. What that means, that's basically saying that complexity, complex solutions always perform simple solution. That's a bunch of bullshit as well. I mean go down the aisle at best buy, which we talk about all the time. Right. Cause I mean, that's perfect target for the horrible brand nightmares. It's such extremes in those eyes. There's such extremes every department. The reality is like, you'll look at one piece of packaging that has everything on it. It's got 20 different pictures of their product. It's got, five different taglines that you need to take advantage of. Plus it's God, a PC joys winners award, 1999, and it's got like specs and features. Well people assume that, because it's got all this information on there, it must be good. Yes. It must be a good solution, which is wrong because people will just walk away from it. 

 00:11:22
Massimo
Right. There's no single message to walk away from there. You're looking at all this. Oh my God. It's just, it's just nothing. But it's just overwhelming. It's too much. It's too much. Right. So there's no simplicity there. Simplicity is when you do head over to solutions like Google solutions or Apple solutions or, I mean, there's a lot of awesome new startup brands out there, especially in the IOT space. They're nice, simple solutions. They don't, you know, nest doesn't okay. Google the product, but they're not focusing in on the technology. They're focusing on how simple this damn thing is to use. Right. They're removing all the unnecessary bullshit. Yeah. And creating an elegant, simple solution. That's right. And that's what it is. This really goes back to how simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Like honestly, nest, it's a complicated camera, not to mention, the fact that it's, it also connects to my wifi. 

 00:12:14
Massimo
It also connects to the cloud. It stores things. You don't even want to think about how complex that is. Let alone the security involved. That's right. They don't want you to know that they just want you to know how damn easy it is to hook up, to watch your kids out in the driveway or watch your, for burglars in the backyard. And that it's all safe and secure. Yeah. That's all you got to remember. Yeah. Beautiful. That's all you have to remember. Yes. You look at some of these other solutions and how they described their, their wifi cameras, security cameras. You don't know what the hell you're in vault. Can you imagine what the installation process is at that point? 

 00:12:49
Shawn
Holy cow. It an ego stroke? Like yours? You gotta say all this stuff you do because this is the kind of work that went into it. Well for the marketers. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

 00:13:03
Massimo
I don't think that, really smart engineers think that way honestly. Okay. That's good. I don't, I think that they're just, they love tech. Yes. They build tech. That's what interests them. Yeah. 

 00:13:14
Shawn
The writing that they're right in the element. And. 

 00:13:16
Massimo
There are some, I don't want to use the term unicorns, but they understand both sides. Right. There's very few of those in all honesty to me, one of those I know, right. I'm yet to, but actually, no we've met one or two. We're pretty lucky. In all honesty, they re they have to rely on the marketing people. And so it's the marketing people. Well they're often clueless. Right. What they do to make people think they're smart, isn't they use marketing jargon to cover up everything. Here the poor engineer who's building this company is like relying on a marketer to help them. They're like, well, first we got to create a sales formula and a sales plan. And I'm all for a sales plan. Don't even talk about the brand. Don't even talk about anything else. ? Right Like it's just, they just complicated so much to hide the fact that they don't know what the hell they're doing. 

 00:14:04
Shawn
Oh, that's frustrating. That's frustrating. 

 00:14:07
Massimo
Results. Get results. Just seriously strive for results. Yes. You don't like hide in a cloak of denial. Oh my God. 

 00:14:15
Shawn
Because they don't spend the time to kind of figure out the backend though. What goes on, maybe they're intimidated or intelligent. It is very scary. I must admit my own personal experience. Yes. It is kind of daunting to try to figure out exactly. 

 00:14:29
Massimo
People are scared. All the more reason why technology is intimidating to people. Yes. Right. So the more you can simplify it. Yes. The more you can humanize it right. That more people will they'll drop their guard and they'll accept the technology. Yeah. Don't talk about the tech specs. Yeah. Talk about what the tech specs will do for them. Simplify the whole journey for the customer. Right. Seriously. It's not just about technology, simplifying. Shouldn't just be about technology. You can create simplicity in logo design, right. Again we've all seen logos out there that they try to put all these hidden meanings and they make a multiple colors and shading and they try to have five or six different messages in there. The problem is it becomes really hard to remember. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Honestly, it's horrible. Local should be simple enough for a child to be able to try to recreate. 

 00:15:23
Massimo
Wow. Right. And it's true. Cause then, you've got that good, strong, easy message. That's understandable. Yep. Yeah. Good. So it's simple, websites, simplicity in websites. Okay. Let's be honest. Okay. A company like Google is not a simple company. There's so many moving parts to a company like Fu and the genius and the people behind there and their infrastructure and their cloud services yet their website is so fricking simple. Seriously. It's one. You don't strive for that. It's just, what do you want to do? I'm here to search. Yeah. That's it? Yep. Don't tell me about news because I like my new somewhere else. Don't tell me about what's hot this week to buy. Cause I'll use another company for that. Just you do good search. Let me do search. And they do that well. Yes. Right? Yeah. Other huge tech Airbnb. Yeah. Again, think about it. 

 00:16:14
Massimo
If you go to the Airbnb website, it's one field to fill in very similar to Google's it's a single purpose. Yeah. Airbnb is not an easy, it's not a simple company. ? Right What they do, all the information, the aggregate, how they sit there and try to make this work logistically. No but when your experience is there, it's simple. And that's what people remember. They remember how simple Airbnb is to use, to find a place where you want to go to get a price you like, and to book it, boom done. Right. Done. You look at some of these other companies, Travelocity and stuff, man. Those things are complicated. This is why Airbnb just shot. That's what, the key to their success. For sure. Yeah. Even products, how many companies, everybody knows certain names. Everybody knows Roku. They know gorilla glue, they know Crocs, right. 

 00:17:04
Massimo
Because these companies build one product well, and everybody knows about it. Yeah. Right. That's I do like that about the startup mentality because people aren't trying to build these, crazy ass, Cisco like companies that have thousands of products and it's really confusing. Right. People. I mean, okay, granted, they're, billions and billions of dollars. Again, we're not really sure what they stand for. Roku dollar brand, very simple one message. One product, right. They've simplified their solution. They've simplified their company, their brand. So it's simplicity. Doesn't just apply to design, but it applies to every aspect. Every asset, no company, all the elements. I don't know. I mean, again, I'm a fan. At the same time we've got an, we offer, many services. To try to simplify our service, to just logo design, I do want to be those companies that just do logo design. Wow. We've simplified our niche, our area, our clients are your expertise. 

 00:18:03
Massimo
I mean, the reality is we offer, tons of different services. We'll get there. Hopefully. 

 00:18:08
Shawn
I think that's good though. I I, it's nice to be that diverse. 

 00:18:13
Massimo
In some ways for us, it is anyway, because it stops us. You know? So we're simplified. At least we know who our market is. We've simplified that. That's great. We provide a breadth of services, but we've simplified who we want to go after. We know those people, we know their struggles. Again, it makes our lives better because we've simplified that solution. 

 00:18:34
Shawn
That's right. We're not, we're not going across all kinds of different fields. 

 00:18:38
Massimo
You're not B to C B. These are for the finance. No no. We know who we want to deal with. We deal with tech and we're happy for that. Yeah. Honestly, it's Confucius said it best life. Shaun is simple. It's people who make it complicated. ? Right Your decision is simple. You just have to get up in the morning and ideally put on a shirt. Ideally. I hope you do. I'd rather you not come to struggle with the pants. Now this COVID thing, but seriously, you get up and you have to put on a shirt it's you who decides to have 20 or 30 different shirts to put on. It spends all of a sudden your simple process, isn't it. 

 00:19:26
Shawn
So much more complicated. You've just made your life so much more difficult because they're like, okay, 

 00:19:30
Massimo
Jeez, what's your, do I wear what pants do I wear? I mean, honestly, life is simple. We choose to make it difficult. Yes. 

 00:19:37
Shawn
But, but I mean, I don't want to have to wear black turtleneck. 

 00:19:41
Massimo
All the time either. I punch you in the face. If you did. Thank you. This is a no black turtleneck agency. Okay. 

 00:19:51
Shawn
It's already been done. What's that girl from the fairness got me. You got me. It's the medical, you remember? Yeah. She looks, she looks like a carbon copy of right. That break down to the same kind of turn. Right. And she would do the black turtleneck. Wow. She was a fraud. Wasn't she was big fraud. 

 00:20:13
Massimo
Let's just sum this up. Pretty simple. How to achieve simplicity, start with everything that you can, everything you can think about, start at follow, throw it all out there. Why not? Because that's what everybody wants anywhere. It's just start throw anything you want start. Right. Slowly start to remove elements one at a time. There's only the single most meaningful life changing message, purpose solution that people will remember. That's simplicity. Nice. Right? Yeah. Figure out what that lasts. That the most important element is. And just focus on that. Not saying, get rid of everything else. Yeah. Just focus on that one element. Everything else is just. 

 00:20:59
Shawn
Backup. Yeah. It's just support. It'll just build up the rest. Right. 

 00:21:02
Massimo
Right. Yeah. You're a search engine. Do search. Well if you a logo designer do logo design. Well exactly right. Don't focus and try to be everything to everybody. I'm not saying being. 

 00:21:15
Shawn
Good topic. 

 00:21:17
Massimo
I am literally the way to achieve simplicity in anything. Start with everything and just start pulling everything back one at a time until you actually get to that point where that's your most valuable asset. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's what you can Mark it on. What was Albert? Einstein said, everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. 

 00:21:40
Shawn
Oh, right. So that's brilliant. That's what I should leave you with. Wow. Right. Leave you with that. Right. 

 00:21:49
Massimo
As simple as possible, but not simpler. Yes. 

 00:21:54
Shawn
Because then that it's too dumb. Boy. I think we're done here. That's awesome. That's that's some heavy stuff here, but I think it's good. That's great. Yeah. Just simple life. Yeah. Okay. Well I think we're at a whisky. Yeah. We're out of things to talk about. Till next week, until next week, let's wrap this bad boy.