Why "Clear, Not Clever" Isn’t the Final Answer
This morning, I was a guest on a podcast about storytelling in business, and wow, did we cover some ground:
💡 The power of personal branding in 2025
📚 The use of micro-stories and metaphors to make a point
🎭 How values and meaning underpin strong brands
And… a bone I’ve been meaning to pick with marketers:
There’s a mantra circling LinkedIn these days: “Clear, not clever.”
The idea? Just tell people what your product does.
It’s good advice—especially for brands that have spent years saying nothing at all.
In fact, compared to messaging devoid of both clarity and cleverness, clear messaging is transformative.
But here’s where I think we’re missing the mark:
We’re forgetting the personal. 🤝 The connection.
"Clear, not clever" feels motivated by sales pipelines—getting people to purchase faster (some might argue it’s about getting to 'solutions' faster, which is admirable. But let’s not pretend profit isn’t part of the equation.)
The truth is, our brains are story processors, not logic processors.
We don’t just want clarity; we want connection.
We attach ourselves to stories—triumphs, failures, human moments.
We seek community—people and brands that think, talk, and believe like us.
When we find companies that reflect our values and tell stories we see ourselves in, it cuts through.
This doesn’t mean pandering (I see you, Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad 🙄). It means aligning your brand’s messaging and actions authentically:
🧡 Championing movements you care about
💬 Sharing stories that reflect your values
👩💻 Celebrating your team publicly
So what am I getting at?
Clarity is a great FIRST STEP, but it’s not the destination.
What comes next?
How do you instill personality, character, values, empathy, and connection into your messaging—without sacrificing clarity?
Because when you’re clear AND clever, your audience doesn’t just see your message. They see themselves in it. And that’s where the magic happens. ✨
Let’s take Fender guitars as an example.
Here’s the “clear” version:
24 frets, Double cutaway, Maple neck, 3 pickups, 5-way switch, 6 strings
Technically accurate, but utterly uninspiring. 🤷♂️ Why do I care?
Now, imagine this:
🎸 If Rock n Roll had a family tree, what would it look like? A long lineage of greats—the voices of Hendrix, Cobain, Mayer. The generations of rockstars to come. Could you connect the two? Are you the missing branch on the family tree of rock ‘n’ roll? You could be. Pick up a Fender and find out.
That sells guitars.
Or consider when Fender’s CEO said during the pandemic and the George Floyd protests:
“We must continue to amplify voices of protest, voices of healing, voices of love, voices of peace, but most of all, voices of change.”
I’m in.
It’s hard to be clever. It’s hard to connect.
But it’s worth it.
Are we oversimplifying the market by removing the magic from our messaging?
