We all love a bit of simplicity, don’t we? Most of us like things to be easier – especially those more routine parts of life like domestic chores and shopping. Which is why we currently have marketers and advertisers clamouring over each other to attach words like ‘simple’ and ‘easy’ to their products. Banks (loans as simple as ABC), phone companies (the simple life), government departments (simplified tax system) – they’re all at it.
(Perhaps your business is doing the same in house: I.T. and human resource departments are prime candidates.)
This is fine, of course, provided the claims have some substance. Far too often, simplicity is used as a wonderfully handy new euphemism for “we’ve just made things harder to do, use or understand, but we’re hoping you won’t notice”.
A small but perfect example. Our small, local shopping centre has a reasonable carpark which, until recently, was very easy to use. Find a space, put your car in it in a roughly square fashion, and off you go. Couldn’t be simpler, could it? Well it could, apparently.
A parking contractor has taken over the parking lot and erected signs proclaiming that parking is now “simple as 1,2,3″. This new ‘simplicity’ involves every car driver parking their car, finding a (hopefully) nearby ticket machine, pressing a button (once understanding that they don’t need to pay a fee if staying for less than three hours), retrieving a ticket, returning to their car and leaving the ticket on the dashboard – and then going shopping.
Now, you tell me: is the second scenario more simple than the first, or is this simplicity wrapped in a very thick coating of spin?
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