It's not easy to stay on top of things anymore. Because things that used to be simple, have become incredibly complicated. It's a changing, crazy, world - that would basically mean marketers should be the same. Crazy, complicated, chasing impossible dreams, trying to change all for keeping up with the trends. An expensive, blank path ahead.

Alan Cooper, software designer leader talks, in one of his books, about personalizing experiences for customers. He believes that it doesn't really matter the general, useless complexity of the product you are selling, but the state of complexity that is focused on your customer's needs. Following the crazy, general trends of your market, you may loose from sight the simplicity required by your prospects. People buy for a purpose and that matters the most when trying to sell them something.

Keeping things simple may become harder by the day, as the remarkable “specific” is now easily lost.

Starting of

But start-ups always rely on the particular. Since money are mostly invested in product capabilities, the “new, shiny, extraordinary, multipurpose” are left behind. For now. It happens to online advertisers : at first they're heading for the market breach, trying to usefully fill in the gaps. Their publishing is to the purpose. Simple and fun. Makes sense.

Useful things, confusing outcomes

Then the requests for enhancements come along. Whether we are talking about an application for a program, a zipper for a jacket pocket or beautiful color on a volleyball, the changes always bring excitement. And the belief that there is room for more. So deceitful.

“Improve it” swamp

And here they roll, one advancement after another, until the product that used to be bought for one particular purpose is now sough-after for tens of reasons. Appreciated mainly for each enhancement individually, not for the whole package. All you can do at this point is develop until the main purpose of the product is lost completely, swamped in its many improvements.

Cutting edges

Which also sounds, but is not, very simple, at all. Feature Friday on continuations.com states : “Taking an old feature that did not get widely adopted out for the sake of simplicity is something that very few companies manage to do”. Overly attached to their challenging ideas, project managers often ignore the signals : “this product is too complicated” and respond arrogantly : “it should be”.

Go back to the core of your marketing efforts. Simplicity nowadays can become the new way of publishing for the extraordinary. Keep organized through Jentla.