When Less Is More.

Less is more is like a mantra that’s said when it comes to streamlining things so that we can, well, accentuate the positive, but do we practice what we preach?

If we did, why is there so little of anything with any real substance out there?

Why is there this almost compulsive need to pile more and more on top of everything else- including the daily ritual of having to share various links that are seldom opened- until what might really have mattered has got lost and forgotten in the hailstorm of clutter? Or has probably been deleted.

When starting out in advertising, they were simpler times with none of the distractions from having a mobile phone. There was Think Time allowing us more focus on who and what mattered and came into our lives, and which made us more selective about how we prioritised life.

We also judged ourselves by the company we kept- and those clients with whom we wanted to work, because they gave us the freedom to create and strive to be the best we could.

We might not have always been kicking winning goals, but we were trying to, because winning international awards for our work meant building up our curriculum vitae.

It meant becoming more than we were, and helping our clients, especially those we liked and respected, to look good and ensure that their bottom lines didn’t sag. It was real teamwork.

For example, when McDonald’s in Hong Kong wanted to thank its customers for their loyalty and huge success, Daniel Ng, Chairman of McDonald’s for Greater China, had the idea of making a regular hamburger available for one week at HK$1. 

The breakthrough idea on how to advertise this came from our head of Media. She placed our ads in the Classified sections of the leading newspapers under headings like “Wanted”, “Bargains” and “For Sale”. 

The idea helped sell more hamburgers, yes, and also fries and shakes and Big Macs and apple pies for McDonald’s because the $1 looked like such a great deal, consumers just had to spend more.

For us, being their ad agency, we scooped a number of international awards for the very creative media buying strategy for the campaign. 

Today, well, where’s this type of out of the box thinking, where the technology is not the idea?

The idea is never an exact science and the tail should never wag the dog.

There are so many online platforms, but how much content is actually seen by those who might be interested enough in what anyone might have to say?

Even buying advertising is no guarantee that it will be seen. And even if seen, there’s no guarantee that many will care enough to turn this into a sale or anything else.

It’s almost as if the type of advertising some of us worked on and remember and maybe even changed us forever is an “ancient tribal art form” like a Gary Larson cartoon.

The problem is that most of everything we’re busy doing is for the sake of doing, but way too often, it’s nothing new or relevant because many wouldn’t know what’s been done.

What this results in is producing what some might THINK is advertising because, well, they don’t know any better and have never even watched the brilliant television series that was “Mad Men” and showed those early days of Madison Avenue and how Don Draper became who he was not.

From many of those with whom I have worked in recent years, apart from zero mentoring and weak leadership skills, hires are left to their own accord and which almost always ends up with the blind leading the blind over the precise.

Inspiration appears to be in short supply and with Okay being good enough.

Okay is never good enough.

If it is, you’re in need of a career change, or are staring at retirement.

From what I have seen, there’s always the need to make something simple- like working to a Less Is More strategy- convoluted.

Perhaps this is the new way of showing one’s value? I don’t know.

It’s like hiring all types of outside consultants to basically tell you what you should already know.

Perhaps this is safety in numbers?

As someone close to me says, “Why bother? You have nothing to prove. Why become like the rest of them?”

She means well, but she doesn’t realise that I have plenty to prove- to myself and will never become one of “them”.

For me, being creative and keeping to a less is more strategy in work and in life is about pride of ownership and making the time to fight to make ideas become reality.

It’s part of my DNA.

More importantly, it’s to show that my generation wasn’t only about making more and more money, or believing in “influencers”, losing ourselves and falling for an often very much rigged version of “online fame” based on numbers.

Frankly, this is when more becomes less.

Thanks for the guidance, Keith.

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