The Marketing Complex

Why Modern Marketers Need to Manage Multiplicity

Many marketers spend their days continually reducing brand positioning into single sentences to answer questions such as 'What is the brand message?' or 'What is the USP?' This tendency to perpetually condense and simplify is a carry-over from a long-gone era when products and services remained static, and changes in platforms happened much more slowly. Today, however, the reality is that brands are infinitely more complex, and span territories, consumer groups and categories. Therefore, to boil a branding message down into a single sentence or USP severely limits a brand's potential scope. After all, a brand is like a person, and a person could never be accurately described in a single sentence.

The Marketing Complex examines the current obsession with over-simplification, and fearlessly challenges marketers to consider whether they are blurring the line between simplifying and simplistic. By exploring the origins and appeal of simplification through some of the best-known literature, the book conclusively proves that endless simplification actually only serves to limit a brand's appeal. By presenting a visionary new model, supported by examples, tools and expertly explained techniques, The Marketing Complex will enable marketers to recognise the important role that depth and multiplicity play in communicating a brand message, and to boldly embrace complexity when crafting their brands.