Why small matters

I think small matters for three fundamental reasons:

 

1.  Big problems don't require big solutions

One of the most important pieces of academic work in the last few decades has been in the field of behavioral economics.  It's hugely important to advertising (Rory Sutherland made it the focus of his two year Presidency of the IPA) but despite this and increasingly popular books on the subject (Nudge by Sunstein and Thaler is as good a place as any to start) we tend to ignore its most basic premises.

One of these is that big behavioral change can occur through small actions.  Perhaps the most famous example is of the huge impact the default setting is on an employee's 401k enrollment.  More often than not the default is set to opt out.  When this is changed to opt in as the default, participation and saving increases dramatically.  

Rory Sutherland talked about the issue of people not finishing their drug prescriptions - a waste of tablets and in some cases (eg antibiotics) patients who aren't fully treated (with the ensuing further days off work, medical costs, erc.)  So why not change the instructions to read, for example, "first take the yellow tablets for 10 days and then take the red tablets for the next 10 days").  Same medication, much greater likelihood for the treatment course to be finished (this is, I believe, called "chunking").

2.  Culture is increasingly small

When I worked on Palm, I was lucky enough to interview Matias Duarte the Head of Human Interface and User Experience (he's now doing amazing work at Google on Android).  When I asked him about the goal of his work he quickly replied, "make it invisible".

The same is true of Jack Dorsey's work on Square. An article in the MIT Tech Review said this about the design philosophy: "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."

This seems to make intuitive sense:  we know from experience that the best customer service, for example, is the service you don't notice.

So, in the increasingly well designed world we live in, the advertising beliefs of bigness, interruption and 'grabbing attention' seem rather at odds with an ethos of smallness (to the point of invisibility).

3.  Small is good for business

In his book 'Little Bets', Peter Sims talks about how great companies stumble upon  greatness.  It comes from experimentation and learning from placing little bets rather than ponderously trying to birth perfection. Google's a great example of this (originally a project to index Stanford's library). as are Starbucks and the way comedians and musicians try out new material.  It's what gets Pixar from "suck to non-suck" through huge amounts of early iteration and feedback sessions every day around rushes.

But being small isn't just good for start ups, it's great for big brands.  At the PSFK conference in New York last year, the designer Andy Spade made the terrific point that "a bigger a brand gets, the smaller it has to act".  It's kind of the common sense version of Coke's 'think global, act local'.  More importantly, doing lots of small stuff is what makes a brand feel personal and, more importantly, gives it energy and momentum, the best leading indicator of future preference and usage.  So being small creates unfair advantage.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about what a small idea looks like.

Comments

[Bud Caddell]

As always, excellent stuff.

The environment (markets and culture) makes incremental changes, companies should keep in-step by making small incremental bets themselves. The goal is co-evolution. But firms tend to drop out, do nothing, and then want to take one giant leap into modernity and often times they just find themselves jumping into swimming pools with no water.

I'd still say though, if you're a giant company, there are ways to exploit that size, amazing distribution systems, ad budgets bigger than the GDPs of most developing countries, etc.

When it comes to behavioral economics, the lesson there is to think holistically, be obsessed with the full system, so that you can identify enough leverage points to design tiny creative solutions around. Changing the default option is a great way to start, but if you don't address a wider picture, people will end up draining their 401ks before they hit retirement.

[Larry Corwin]

When it comes to brands, small is also accessible and ownable. As brands more frequently talk ‘with’ rather than ‘to’ consumers, feeling small becomes important in the authenticity – or perceived authenticity – of that communication. It gives people the feeling that what they have to say actually matters, and won’t get drowned out (this can also be applied to customer service.) Similarly, consumers will only feel as if they’re part owners of a brand if the brand feels small and accessible enough to actually be owned.

[edward boches]

Gareth,
Great curating of multiple sources to make some very good points. We (some of us) argue this stuff all the time in an effort to prevent the big idea from always being the default. For some, however, it's too much work to iterate and keep on going. They like the idea they can execute and walk away from. Too bad for them, as soon they'll be the ones left behind.

[Andy]

Sometimes clients struggle to buy small ideas even though their impact could be huge. I've seen this happen. It's easier to get excited by a 'big' idea and get others excited, internally. That makes it very important to get good at explaining the big effect of small ideas.

My small contribution to this big subject ;)

[Richard Santiago]

Super super post from a BIG brain. Thank you. Incremental incentives to nudge behavior, invisibility, elegant disruption and local acts are essential - strategizing and building a cultural mindset around SMALL as big goals is the rub. A way to nudge clients/partners/internal resources to rally around this would be a logical follow up. And then the measurement of "small fires" can help sell the idea through to clients, particularly embattled CMOs under the gun for results. Important important stuff, thank you for taking it on. Big proponent. Thanks again.

[Phil Adams]

I'm undecided on this big idea / small idea distinction you're making.

I understand the rationale but I'm uncomfortable with the nomenclature.

We're all in the business of capturing people's imagination. And some ideas do that better than others. But I think it's the structure of the idea rather than its size that determines its potential to move people.

It's a consistent fault of traditional ad agencies that their ideas are too finished, polished and boxed off. There's nothing left for people to play or conjur with.

The best modern ideas are like the box that the toy comes in. The box that the kid would much rather play with because it allows him/her to use his/her imagination.

IRN-BRU (Scottish equivalent of Coke) ran a cheeky campaign last summer to coincide with The World Cup. The people of Scotland are resigned to the fact that their team rarely qualifies for the final stages, and that they have no chance of ever winning it.

But last year IRN-BRU launched an idea called Bruzil.

What if, by mating with consenting Brazilians, we could breed a world beating team for the 2034 World Cup that combined Scottish grit with Brazilian flare?

That to me is a "big" idea.

But it is also an open, participative, imagination-capturing cardboard box of an idea. The results prove it.

We should be making cardboard boxes rather than toys.

[Gareth]

Phil
Great comment and I don't think we disagree. Small vs big is about structure more than size (see the next post); small ideas are different in structure and, more importantly, tend to create long rather than big ideas.

[cheap jerseys]

I'd still say though, if you're a giant company, there are ways to exploit that size, amazing distribution systems, ad budgets bigger than the GDPs of most developing countries, etc.

[ulikurtenbach]

Great post Gareth,

made me re-watch Rory's sweat the small stuff talk again.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/rory_sutherland_sweat_the_small_stuff.html

[Tom Whitney]

Love your thinking and the discussion here! Thank you for doing this blog, we need more challenging thinking like this in the branding world.

Is the real question big vs. small? Ask an inmate doing time in solitary confinement what two things every human being wants, and he would say neither to be small, nor big, but to be together with others, and in that togetherness to be perfectly free. Intimacy plus freedom. We don't want to be lone wolves or a pack of caged wolves.

In evaluating ideas for big versus small thinking, we may misalign our thinking with what people truly want—the complimentarity of togetherness plus freedom. It's not one side versus the other, we want togetherness and freedom at the same time.

Togetherness means close, but it doesn't mean small. A work team united by deep core values, even though they are spread around the world, can feel close. Twelve people jammed into a small elevator can feel completely distant if they share no common purpose or vision.

This type of unifying order—togetherness plus expansiveness—is reflected in the big idea. It unites many ideas together as one, while giving them limitless legs for extension. Internally and externally unobstructed (resistance free) as the Buddha described Nirvana.

This is nonduality, as it's known in Eastern spiritual tradition, in which the whole and the part exist in seamless, resistance-free integration as one. A big idea is a nondualistic construction, so is the Internet with its many-as-one united Web sites.

The more pure, transparent, elegant and benevolent the unifying vision, the more easily the part wears the leash of the whole, feeling intimate closeness plus limitless extension—the two causal factors driving the runaway success of the Internet.

Nonduality delivers that perfect intimacy, which I think you're after in the idea of smallness, plus the radically expansive freedom we want—to feel limitless. I believe nonduality is the true theoretical foundation of branding and organizational development.

More coming on nondual branding on my blog--www.pixidis.com.

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