Reducing friction

One of the thoughts that really crystallized in my mind judging the Clios was that there is an increasing amount of work that sets a new role for communication - to remove, or at least reduce, the friction between brands and people.  They attempt to create frictionless brands.  This can be done in a number of ways - from doing something for a group of people and then using communication to amplify it (think things like H&R Block or Dulux's Let's Color project) to using media and technology to remove barriers between the product and people (think Jay-Z's Decoded campaign or Epic Mix).

It really felt the best work this year had really simple ideas that removed the barriers between people and brands; between what people do and what you want them to do.  Yes, there was some amazing execution and amazing use of technology but it finally seems that we are in a world where elegant solutions trump elegant things.

Flying back from the Clios, I was reading a piece in MIT's Technology Review about Jack Dorsey.  It talks about the ethos behind Square and says this: "Square is elegant. The user's flow through payment or application has been reduced to the fewest possible steps; the app has minimal features. This emphasis comes directly from Dorsey, who says, "I'm really good at simplifying things." He espouses a tremendously attractive belief that good industrial design wins customers' trust by disappearing."

Maybe advertising is finally catching up with industrial design.  But if it is, we are going to need to think about our models and measurement.  Intrusion and noticeability (the AIDA model we tend to default to and most research companies measure by) are rather at odds with ideas that feel a little more invisible in nature.

Comments

[John Dodds]

Spot on, but who said AIDA had to be intrusive?

[John Dodds]

This idea seems to me to be paralleled by Kevin Kelly's stuff about what you need to supply in order to induce users to pay.

I think much of that could be conflated under the banner of customer service. What do you think?

[Tyler Turnbull]

Nice post.

Removing friction is something that underpinns many digital start-ups and some of the strongest points on how to review it are in a great article called The Viral Me (link below).

Your thought about elegant solutions trumping elegant things is spot on.

The post above referencing Kevin Kelly is intereting as well. Kelly, in What Technology Wants, writes about the Innovation Pyramid and I think applying this process to elegant design is interesting.

Many brands can think about great experiences but few can execute them with the simplicity requried to spread and succeed.

Here's a few links to the posts mentioned above:

http://adjoke.blogspot.com/2011/01/remove-friction-add-value.html

http://adjoke.blogspot.com/2010/12/possibility-is-easy-execution-isnt.html

[Phil Adams]

I trained (well studied) as an engineer.

And the concept of "elegance" is much beloved in engineering circles.

Engineering is real-world, applied science. You can't ignore messy, complex, real-world influences on your work.

You have to embrace the mess and design around and for it.

In my experience the best planners and creatives embrace the mess too.

The mess can come from the brand, from contemporary culture, from the fact that the budget doesn't match the ambition, from rules and regulations, or from "stupid" client culture/politics.

Elegant creative solutions turn messy necessities into virtues.

The guys who created a lot of British cigarette advertising back in the day knew this.

And "modern", tech-savvy creative people know this too. Maybe their tech-savviness makes them more like engineers than traditional creatives and therefore more inclined to elegantly embrace the mess.

[Ishmael Vasquez]

Humans are not that complex beings and the fact that advertising (ever) exist is to simplify the message for an specific industry.

We have all heard "less is more" and "creativity is substraction" but both are easier said than done. Finally ad folk are understanding this concept, but are years away from progress.

[Moncler Pas Cher]

Aujourd'hui le réchauffement global est un fait indiscutable, et le temps chaud autour du monde année après année continuera d'être misen scène. Le visage du réchauffement climatique à la vie, le travail humain et la production d'apporter à la crise plus grave