By Maverick Steffen | Daily Marketing Advice

Tall, short, fat, skinny, rich, experienced, angry, funny, dweeb, loser, jerk.

What do all of these things have in common? They all signify the fact that people like to sum up very complex ideas with limited terminology. We all tend to do this. Whether in the interest of saving time, or retaining valuable memory space, most people take away only a couple adjectives with regard to everything and everyone they deal with.

So what does this mean to your marketing plan?

For one thing, it shows that you need to make sacrifices. You need to shed away all of the unimportant hoopla and trumped-up services and look for the one unique benefit of your product that separates you from your competitor. People will only have a limited time to inhale your advertisement, and so it must lead with a strong benefit that single-handedly describes your product, and illustrates the benefit.

The illustration above is a good example.

At the time Geico launched this advertisement, insurance companies were using prices and respective coverage features to compete with one another. Geico realized that the process of purchasing car insurance became very difficult given all of the variables presented to consumers. So what did they do? They launched a campaign whose message was, "So easy a cavemen can do it."

Yes I know, it sounded pretty stupid at the time, and certainly still does today. But hearing this over and over again had people coming away with one impression about Geico- easy! Here they sacrificed all of the bells and whistles of their product for one clear cut message. President Obama used change, Crest used cavities, Domino's used delivery and Charlie Sheen used winning. What will you use?