You have bought a new smart phone and got 3G connection enabled. To test the 3G, what is the first thing most of us do? Fire the browser and type –…. Yes, you guessed it right – the ubiquitous “Google.com”! That’s one of the unexpected use of Google.com site in India apart from the searches. Have you ever noticed what is so special about Google site? The world has seen many changes and technological advances in last 15 years. The fortunes have been made and destroyed. However, for Google home page, nothing has changed in these years. It is the best living testimony of how simplicity works. The user wants to search, goes to site, sees the text box, types the search string and done. Nothing else is needed! No clutter of flash, content, ads, simply, nothing at all!

That’s the power of simplicity. And that is what makes the basic foundation for the minimalist marketing. In this complex word of systems, the consumer should not be loaded with extra stress for handling the differentiation, POP or POD and what not! Idea is to cater to the ‘laziness’ aspect of the human and redesign your marketing as well as product development efforts, to make things simple – to the absurd level if possible.

There were times when consumer used to buy a music player, a phone, a camera and to some extent games on PC / laptop / video games separately. Then they needed internet connection to hook to their PC for internet surfing. This castle of complexity vanished in thin air in 2007, when Steve Jobs had gifted the ‘iPhone” to the world. The theory of constraints with respect to many systems and dependency was sent to Stone Age with this wonderful device. Now, with technical advances, the display has left many PC monitors, laptop screens and even TVs way behind. The “Siri” is there to avoid typing and most of features can be used with voice command. The marketing of Apple relies on extreme simplicity. Have you ever noticed Apple marketing the resolution (X*Y) format, or the megapixels of the camera or the clock speed of the processor? Apple believes and

The success to minimalist approach lies in to evoke emotions and belief in the minds of consumers. It should be positive and impactful. One more example is about the unpleasant situation in India on gender ratio. There is a campaign “Save girl child” is running to save the female fetus and stop abortions. The root cause of this problem is the deep rooted biased towards a male child. See the ad below which attacked this notion with another strong logic of religious faith to counter attack the deep rooted beliefs. It does not convey anything negative on the current situation which may turn off the reader. It focuses on the beliefs of the faith and forces consumer to rethink and question the herd mentality of having a male child.

See even the logo itself is very minimalist compared to their rivals Microsoft. The logo and the name says it all, communicates it all. There is no further work required by the consumer to her own research. The brand itself has established itself as the pioneer in simplicity.

With changing times, the marketing approach and thinking also needs a re-engineering. Things have started changing albeit at a slow pace, but the changes are there to see. The cola giant, Coca cola, used to put lot of marketing touch points in the single ad to address the youth, to have celebrity to create halo effect, to show the bubbles to create a liking etc. It was like meeting a matrix of check lists. However, now they are trying to minimize all these intrinsic factors and focusing one a theme, a simple theme which makes consumers happy. Notice the global campaign “Open Happiness” which focuses only on spreading cheers across the globe, of different segments of society, people of all age and gender. The recent campaign in India about being crazy extends this theme to be crazy about making someone happy in day to day situations (at shoe store, at a collect canteen kind of setup). These ads have been epitome of simplicity and touching the very basic human emotions portrayed by people who look and behave like a common man. No Shahrukh, no Salman, no Katrina, no MS Dhoni … – Period.

Twitter is another example of going minimalist; you have only 140 characters to express yourself (to tweet), and people are able to do it successfully every day, every minute, every second. This strengthen the fact, that to express, marketers do not need to have all size fits all approach for each marketing effort. The minimalist way can achieve much more than the traditional approaches. The point is to rethink the whole situation again – from scratch, with a creating and innovative mind. Think what consumers want, are they looking for the central route or peripheral route, or can you create a new route altogether which conveys the power of simplicity and get your message understood without zero effort in consumers mind. Remember, it’s the simple things which have long term memories in our mind. We still remember “twinkle twinkle little star’ and not the school prayer!

So, in summary we see that the trend towards making marketing minimalist and simple for consumers to understand is happening. Is it applicable to all the products, the answer is probably no. But, for most of the products, this can be utilized very effectively. What about sensuality? How to make simple more sexy, more sensual? After all this is one of the strongest emotion and heavily used in marketing, isn’t it? This last mile is covered with the innovative Durex ad. Now, do we need to say anything more about being minimalist but creating the best impact?

 

Image References

      Apple logo from apple.com

      Microsoft logo from Microsoft.com

      Google Logo from Google.com

      Coke ads from Coca cola official site

      Save Girl child “http://www.afaqs.com/adinlife/photo-details.html?id=581”

      Durex ad “http://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_hVfE2qcyzXU/TVFPPTviF1I/AAAAAAAAB0A/FHtNB6rRuiM/s800/minimalist-ads-durex-cheaper.jpg”