We in the affluent USA live in a complex world, bombarded by messages from every conceivable side and the other, just trying to keep up with the ever-changing developments in technology. It’s hard to think straight, deafened by the electronic din, and strangely enough our lives haven’t necessarily been made easier by technological change.

We are, and have always been, besotted with technology. New products sell better with the latest gizmos attached even though most times they are just pointless marketing tools. My cable channel program guide is overly complicated and would benefit by having a more simple and reductive design, but it is obvious to me that the designers had to make all of the functionality transparent at level one, which makes for a confusing mess. The remote control also suffers from the same disease. There are so many buttons I fear it has contracted chicken pox.

When I interact with a product like my cable guide, I would like the experience to be a pleasant and relaxing one. I guess in this state I might be considered in my passive mode, but should I need some complexity I would expect the system to cater for my increased demands in an effortless way.

So the bombardment I mentioned is not going away and we are increasing the number of ways to be reached. Today I can receive messages on my Phone, TV, Radio, Print, Outdoor, Cinema and Computer. All of these platforms can attract my attention so the opportunities for integrated campaigns or cross-platform branding are immense. But here’s the thing…it gets harder to find a solution for a multi-platform campaign when you increase the number of platforms.

Every project comes with a long list of attached objectives - The longer the list the more worried you should be and the less likelihood of a successful outcome. Reducing the list to a manageable size can be a tough sell but it’s worth the effort.

The challenge for the creative team is working with the client to find a way to distill the essence of the creative brief to a single thought, so that consumers are able to easily comprehend the intention of the message.

Now we have to make sure that the idea can function visually in different mediums - lets say as a still on a billboard – or as a tiny movie playing on your phone right up to the all singing and dancing cinema spot. That’s a big range.  So it’s best to start with the still iconic image for the billboard and work up toward moving image solutions rather than the other way round.

After all you wouldn’t build your house by starting at the roof. Or would you?

Reductive thinking