Some things are great together. Gin and tonic. Peanut butter and chocolate. Puppies and puppies. But like cognac, ideas are better unadulterated. Know this, the best way to pour soy sauce on the strawberry ice cream of your campaign is to take the essence of what you are saying and add the word “and”.

Any good creative brief has one, most important question: “What is the one thing we want to say?”  Not, “what is the one thing we want to say and the other thing?” or “what is the one thing and the other thing and the other, other thing?”.

Advertising today is like trying to sell broccoli at a chocolate fountain. There are way too many other interesting and delicious ideas competing for your audiences’ attention. Your only hope is to make that commercial message as, or more, compelling than that TikTok of a confused golden retriever. And there lies a lesson. That TikTok is more interesting because it’s doing one thing: confusing a dog and…nothing else.

But all too often you fall into the trap of believing that your audience came to that chocolate fountain looking for broccoli. That they care. That they want to know everything about you. And more. They don’t. You have one chance to say one thing. And if the creatives come back with a powerful expression of it, you win. How does this work? Ask for one thing only and ask for that one thing to be dramatized, demonstrated, proclaimed or set on fire in the most compelling way possible.

These sorts of “one things” set the stage for simple, clear and compelling expression. By way of exercise, take out a pair of mental scissors and use the word “and” to stick any two random lines from the above list together. ie: Our product is bigger, and our product is European-er. Anything you do with that will be less than half as good. It will be overcooked broccoli, dropped on the floor and trodden on at the chocolate fountain that is today’s information overload.