"The One Thing"

Whenever I introduce the the standard of "The One Thing", I'm constantly amazed at the pressure I get. "Can't I make it two?," is the insistent plea. (With a secret glee, I reiterate, "No, you get one.")

One should be all you need. One is a great number for this. One demands focus. One means that decisions will need to be made. One begs for discipline. One can be a bitch. But... one is also liberating.

In the end, one is all you want. Because one can be executed flawlessly.

What am I talking about? Exactly what you're talking about and it should be just "The One Thing". People are extremely busy these days and constantly assaulted by messaging through all forms of media. There is no place safe from someone trying to message something to you. Marketing screens at the ATM and gas station pumps, vinyl graphics on supermarket floors, postcards on the walls above urinals, edible ink on Pringles and Fruit Roll-Ups. Messaging is everywhere making our everyday existence that much more complicated. Our parents (at our age) didn't have to deal with the volume of information we're asked to process and, you know what? Our kids will be confronted with even more and asked to digest just as much.

So I ask: in this sort of environment, why would you ever expect your harried, time-crunched, over-saturated audience to spend more than a modicum of time on your piece of marketing? It ain't going to happen. Get it to "The One Thing" and make it easily consumable.

Remember, your "One Thing" should be an invitation for the consumer to enter your world and engage further. No one wants to engage with something that feels like it's going to be complex from the outset. That is an immediate show-stopper. "Hey, come here. I want you to take a look at this thing I've got. Now, it's going to take no fewer than 10 multi-part steps through several cluttered screens for you to discern what we're trying to say much less what we want you to do. But, I promise, cross my marketing heart, that it will be worth the pain and suffering once you've gotten there. Our product is just soooo cool."

Here's the main reasons I hear for making undisciplined, unfocused communications:
1. We need to tell them the whole story
2. We have so many benefits/features
3. We're trying to accomplish a lot of things
4. What we're offering is complex
5. We have multiple audiences/everyone is our audience
6. My product manager/marketing manager thinks we should talk about all this stuff
7. We have different goals for this communication (usually means "goals at cross-purposes")
8. This is the way we've always one it before
9. This is the way my boss/VP/CEO wants it
10. One is such a lonely number

Now admittedly the last one is mine and reflects my love for great 60's music. As for the others, I've heard them all in some form over the years and, when left to their own devices, create a recipe for disastrous creative executions. The one I left off the list is the gauntlet that any creative runs inside a corporation. Getting it through the numerous "stakeholders" without suffering the "Death by a Thousand Cuts" is an art unto itself and worthy of a blog post all its own.

A ruthless fanaticism to "The One Thing" will ensure that your communication is clearly understood. Isn't that the raison d'etre for any marketing communication? To be clearly understood and acted upon? I would certainly hope so.

Back to Walter Consultants.

Subscribe to this blog in a reader