Lisa was cutting my hair and talking about how she fixed her own toilet.
“The worst thing about hiring guys is that they talk so much about the job,” she said. “They get to your house and start talking about all the things they need to check, all the things that could go wrong, and how the project is probably doing to stretch out over a few weeks because the distributor might not have the right parts in stock.
“In the time it takes a guy to tell me all this I was able to go Home Depot, buy the toilet kit and finish the job.”
Empowered by her success with the toilet Lisa was now building a deck in her backyard.
“The standard sized boards made the project straightforward,” she said, “but the challenge was the screws. Have you ever walked down the screw aisle? There are hundreds, maybe thousands of different sized screws. To make matters worse you need different kinds of tools for different screws. I mean, c’mon, how many different kinds of screws do we need? Why can’t I build my deck with one or two types of screws? I really resent the screw aisle. Why do people make things so complicated?”
I closed my eyes as she started cutting again.
Screws. Financial investments. Health care plans. Government legislation. Business strategies. “Expert” advice. Diet plans. 15-step proven methodologies on everything from marketing to living a better life.
Over-complicated, over-thought and so overwhelming that most of us just freeze. The paralysis numbs us and dumbs us. Making us reliant on experts, products and services that we may or may not really need. Or, like Lisa, just making us resentful, angry and suspect.
Has marketing become the screw aisle?
I fear that it has.
While choice is a wonderful thing, have we gone too far in product extensions?
Have ‘content marketing’ emails started to sound like the guys who drive us crazy yakking about how complicated the job will be, how tough it might be to find the right parts, how they’ll have to come back again to measure and that’s going to be tough because….”
Are too many preying on people’s fear, uncertainty and doubt? Exacerbating anxiety to sell more than a person really needs?
Is our marketing building a screw aisle or making it easy — and maybe even enjoyable — for Lisa to build a beautiful deck?
Lois, this is simply brilliant…
Perhaps Marketers have drifted a bit too right or left (pardon political pun) of the basic thing that sells, motivates and persuades… brilliant conceptual thinking. We Marketers live in a world of increasing ven diagrams, content management & strategy meetings,complicated wireframes and lots of “how do we measurethe metrics or anayltics” meetings.
The screw aisle is both complicated and simple at the same time depending on what you are looking for. The problem often, is that we do not know that simple fact.
My 30 + years of experience shows me time and time again that good ideas and brilliant thinking even if unconventional usually rises to the top. Just think of the guy who invented the rachet screwdriver….
Chris: Agree on the value of brilliant conceptual thinking. It’s the hardest thinking, which is perhaps why so many of we marketers fill our time with everything else.