So a while back, I wrote a counter argument to the topic “Is Google Making Us Stupid“.
Even though 18 months or so have passed, I still think society is too quick to blame others for their own shortcomings rather than look in the mirror and see their own inadequacies … especially given Google simply compiles information from out in the blogosphere whereas other media outlets – ie: newspapers – supposedly focus on identifying, filtering and publicising detailed and accurate information.
Have a look at this headline from the Daily Mail …
Seriously, how crap is that?
‘MASSIVE 235FT ROCKET CARRYING A SECRET SPY SATELLITE’
Even the thickest village idiot can work out it’s probably not very secret if the fucking UK Daily Mail knows about it … but that didn’t stop them trying to make some big ‘EXCLUSIVE’ out of a story that just wasn’t there.
The good news is that in the articles comments, there was a diatribe of sarcasm showing people aren’t as gullible as many like to believe … and that’s good news, because in our bid to stop clients pushing ‘Mr Bean’ style communication, we can point out that not only do they want to be treated with intelligence, but if you do, they’ll be more likely to pay more money for the brand because let’s face it, even if you understand what Mr Bean is trying to say, you’re unlikely to think anything he has is worth paying a lot of money for.
Too many brands try to dumb down because they think that will maximise relevance – but having lots of people know about you doesn’t mean you’ll get lots of people buying you, far from it infact – which is why I believe if you want to stand a chance of increasing both brand value and price point, you’d be much better off focusing on trying to dumb up, if only for the fact that alone will immediately differentiate you from 99% of the competition.