Every brand, campaign or piece of content starts with complexity; research, data, insight and opinion. The challenge is to cut through that complex information, find the truth that matters most and build from there. At SIM7, we use an old journalism question to do it: what’s the line?
In a newsroom, “what’s the line?” means coming up with the headline that’s going to sell the story. What’s genuinely interesting here? What’s the hook that would make somebody invest their time in this? And in creative work, the same question shapes the way we approach brands, campaigns, content and creative strategy.
Find the idea before the execution
Most briefs contain a lot of information. There are business objectives, audience data, stakeholder opinions, proof points, product features, strategic priorities and messages that need to be conveyed.
They’re all important, of course. But they’re not all equally important.
Give them all the same weight and the creative becomes muddled. A brand cannot stand for ten things with the same force. A piece of content can’t make five propositions land simultaneously. At some point, someone has to establish a hierarchy. And frankly, cuts need to be made – but let’s come back to that in a second.
This is what “what’s the line?” helps us to do. It forces a decision about the big idea before the execution begins. Because once that thought is clear, the rest of the work can support it: the messaging, visual language, campaign idea, content and design.
Information isn’t a story
The purest example of this approach in action is through our work for ESCP Business School, where we helped relaunch The Choice, ESCP’s online ideas platform. We employ a team of journalists who interview academics, business leaders, faculty and alumni around the world and turn their expertise and research into stories for a wider audience.
The source material is often complex, and the challenge is to communicate those complex ideas clearly without losing what makes them interesting. We might be working with research into artificial intelligence, organisational behaviour, sustainability, geopolitics or leadership. An interview can run for an hour, while a research paper might represent years of work and contain numerous findings, citations and supporting arguments.
Again, this is all important information. But at some point, the journalist has to decide what is carrying the story. What’s the most interesting thing this person has said? Why should someone outside their specialist field care? Where is the tension?
Complexity needs hierarchy
Naturally, if you’re an academic who has devoted years to a subject, you understand how much nuance sits behind every argument. Or if you’ve spent a year developing a new business proposition, you may have a long list of benefits you want people to understand.
But the audience arrives without that context. It needs to be told what to notice first (and where to find supporting information when ready) – it’s worth noting here that finding ‘the line’ doesn’t mean throwing the rest away, it means being mindful of the brand, campaign or content journey.
“Kill your darlings”
As mentioned earlier, cuts have to be made. And this is where things can get tricky, because it’s where human egos can get bruised. No one likes to have their contribution or idea edited out of the final product, and we understand that. Nevertheless, it’s often a matter of space: a brand palette can only have so many colours; a blog can only contain so many words.
In writing and editing, the phrase, ‘kill your darlings’, is a reminder to edit out even your most beautiful or cleverest phrases if they do not serve the overall plot or structure of the piece. And the same can be said across brand, creative or content; as an agency, we know that adding more of anything usually just ends up muddying the waters. Less is almost always more.
From research paper to short-form video
We have recently started applying the same thinking to a series of short social videos in which we take pieces of academic research and turn them into content that can be understood at the speed of TikTok. The skill is to understand the material well enough to identify the one thing that will make somebody outside the field interested in it. Without that judgement, you end up compressing information rather than distilling it.
Once the central idea is clear, the evidence and explanation can be built around it to fill whatever time or space is available to you (which often depends on the channel).
And yes, sometimes a specific technical term genuinely matters. A research finding may need qualification. Or a brand may need to contain several dimensions even if one is clearly dominant. Good creative does not pretend that complexity does not exist; it just gives the audience a way in.
Whether we’re shaping a brand, developing a campaign or turning technical information into clear content, the principle is the same. Before you add another message, another colour, another proof point or another paragraph, ask what the audience really needs to take away.
What is the single idea that’s strong enough to carry the rest? What deserves to lead, and what can sit behind it?
In other words: what’s the line?
If you’re trying to cut through complexity, sharpen your messaging or find the big idea behind a brand, campaign or piece of content, we can help. Talk to SIM7 about turning complex information into clear, compelling creative.