What's Your Word?

Global advertising powerhouse Saatchi and Saatchi has a creative philosophy that permeates everything they do:  “Brutal simplicity of thought.”  It means that simple ideas have a greater impact.  They are understood faster and retained longer.  Saatchi and Saatchi requires all their ad concepts to be distilled to their essence, ideally to one or two words.  Think of President Obama’s latest campaign slogan – Forward – or the classic Volkswagen ads – Think small – and you can see the power of simplicity to help an idea or image communicate something important about a product, a candidate, or an idea. 

You may not be creating ads or campaigns, but all leaders, regardless of their field, have to communicate ideas and persuade others.  Simplifying ideas to their most basic essence is critical to helping your ideas cut through the information clutter and making them “stick” in people’s minds.

This simplicity concept can also be powerful as you think about who you are as a leader and what you want others to associate with you.  What one word do you want others to immediately think of when they think of you? 

Think about it for a minute and post it below.  Don’t over think it.  It’s probably the first or second word that comes to mind when you ask yourself this question. 

Mine is truth.  What’s yours?