Be very something
Whenever my partner and I have an argument, we eventually get to the stage where we acknowledge why we were arguing in the first place. I mean, really arguing. It had nothing to do with the dishes or whatever.
I often has to do with the fact either of us (or both) are over-compensating for something we didn't have before. So when I overreact because of a critique about how I cleaned something, I'm over-compensating for my lack of parental guidance when I was a kid. And so on, and so forth.
In these cases, over-compensating is seen as something that we ought to acknowledge, and over time get better at managing or anticipating. But in some other situations, it's useful to reframe this over-compensation not as something that damages what you want to say, but rather that benefits it.
In advertising and communications, you want to find a way to boil down a message to its simplest possible components, and then dramatise it in some capacity right after. Over the years I've seen this described as:
Simplify then dramatise
Simplify and amplify
Straight message, twisted visual
Straight visual, twisted message
Dumb setup, straight delivery
But the way I see it, these are all forms of over-compensation. What are they compensating for? The fact that we live in a saturated attention environment, where contrary to popular belief we don't have short attention spans, but short consideration spans. Hook me or else.
In these circumstances, over-compensation is a beautiful thing. It not only leads to more interesting work, it leads to more effective work. It's another way of saying that your work needs to be "very something" (Joe Staples).
I find this to be equally true to strategy, not just ideas themselves. Good strategy is by definition very something. You can create competitive advantage by doubling down on a specific message, tone of voice, target audience, emotional benefit, brand world, comms strategy, and so on.
All of these are ways to over-compensate, or to be very something in your work. The question then is not whether you need to over-compensate in your communications, but rather what you're willing to over-compensate against. Nail that, and you get closer to having a clear problem to solve.
