It’s a snow globe day here in Manhattan. Magic is drifting from the sky, coating Columbus Circle with white frosting and it’s 100% pure Currier & Ives in Central Park. Looking out the window it could as easily be a century past, the world roaring back from a previous pandemic; or a century hence. Squint your eyes through the flakes and time blurs.

After a busy week of post Lombardi Trophy commentary, the world isn’t exactly thirsting for more opinions. Perfect, say we, for two updates:

How can marketers utilize simplicity? This advice is not like descending from Mt. Reductionist armed with stone tablets full of “thou shalt and shalt nots.” In fact, giving this topic any kind of convoluted canonical spin would be dead wrong since the first rule of any decent how-to—exception made for every home assembly guide ever written—is clarity.

Lately, those of us who hang our boots on the fence at the OK-To-Peel-The-Onion Corral have been waxing on and on about the essential value of less versus more in marketing and advertising. To which you might think, “I’ll get right on that, just as soon as I untangle the double-triple-overhand-hitch-half-full-Gordian-knot that’s item 1 of the 200 on today’s to-do list…Maybe tomorrow.”

If 2020 was, at its oozing, ill-mannered, and sulphureous heart, way too complicated, we’re voting with both words and deeds for a 2021 that’s gets its simplicity act together. To that end, our new-as-of-last-Wednesday-New-Year’s resolution is to make as many contributions to the cause of clarity as we can.

As part of our ongoing public service campaign to ensure that 2021 is nothing like the Year-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named,