In the days of high production values, it’s nice to see that the Masters golf tournament — using simple, elegant , ‘old school’ production values — is still of  one of the great golf tournaments in the game…  and a lot of fun to watch.    It’s something you see a lot in this blog, the strength of story argument.   What CBS is doing in its Masters coverage is telling great stories of golf past and present.    Not unlike Olympics coverage, it’s focusing on the people, the competitors.

In many situations, fancy production values, with high tech graphics and booming music tracks (the superbowl school) can overwhelm a commercial or marketing film and become almost larger than then the underlying messaging of the video.  The big production can also be a sign that a simple story had not or would not work (either for the client or for the marketing messaging).  That’s not to say there are not good reasons to go the ‘sensational’ route — trade show booths meant to attact customer traffic or spashy sexy ads meant to draw attention to a new product.

It’s all part of same message we see in many businesses — KISS – keep it simple stupid!