Legendary singer-songwriter and musician Woody Guthrie is today remembered as an American icon.
Guthrie wrote over 1,000 songs, including one that became his most famous, "This Land Is Your Land."
Beyond his more obvious talents, Guthrie left to marketers and brand strategists a gem of timeless advice:
"Any fool can make something complicated.
It takes a genius to make it simple."
He was right of course.
Yet Guthrie lays out a difficult objective, as business leaders and often marketing professionals default to admiration of the complicated - while discounting the simple - in framing the story of their product.
For this reason, CEOs, CMOs and brand owners often stumble in grasping the simple, in communicating precisely what IT is that makes the human experience with a product so astonishingly great, and why.
Even though simple is the best concept to communicate to any audience, because simple makes the most intuitive sense.
Growth in the reputation equity of any brand - whether product or enterprise - requires an abandon-the-superfluous focus.
Thus, if you are a marketing professional or brand owner, ask yourself: Are you complexity's fool, or simplicity's genius?