Maeda's SIMPLICITY

Great Taste! Less Filling!

I'm not much of a beer drinker, but I have certainly loved the Miller Lite ads over the years. For those of you that are unaware of these advertisements, they have two sides of the room where one yells, "Great Taste!" and the other side of the room yells, "Less Filling!" If I understand the concept clearly, to drink a beer is to engage in both great taste with the penalty of an addition to your waistline; to drink a Miller Lite, or any other light beer, is to have the classic win-win effect occur—you get both great taste without a sacrifice of a heavy filling. I wonder what marketing genius recognized that calling "diet beer" could be improved upon by calling it "light beer." This person should certainly win some sort of national award, if he or she hasn't already.

We want the "light" version of something when we don't want to be overburdened with the pleasure of more. To choose "light" over "heavy" is the proper expression of a person that carries the burden of guilt. "No, I shouldn't do that. But I really want to. I'll just have ooooone sip." In the dessert category, a good example is an ice-cream bon-bon. It isn't an entire banana-split sundae or a chocolate parfait. Just a tiny morsel of ice cream dipped daintily in a little-bitsy of chocolate. It is as more as less could ever be. One could argue that it's harder to make a good bon-bon versus making an average-quality chocolate sundae. To make what appears to be less can sometimes be more work. Thus we come to the Seventh Law which is,

I guess the same can go with raising children. Today at the Media Lab I sat with author Akiko Sugaya talking about children and the kind of invisible bits of pieces that you sprinkle over them. When they are young and constantly changing, you really can't clearly see the evidence of your careful handicraft. But you know that they are more for what you have done, and that you are more as well inside. Now that's real win-win!