In the world of physics, a Grand Unified Theory is one that wraps weak, strong, gravitational and electrical forces into one, neatly packaged bit of math that anyone with a cursory knowledge of graduate-level multivariable calculus could fake understanding. It is, basically, a theory that explains life, the universe and everything.

In the world of advertising, unification theory is anathema. If a GUT for advertising existed, sales of books like “How to Really Connect with Influencers On a Deeper Emotional Level While Riding the New Social Media Bubble Until Someone Moves Your Cheese” would plummet. Ad agenices could no longer trademark their proprietary branding systems that all look amazingly similar anyway. And ad blogs? Crikey.

Yet advertising has had a GUT for years, decades even. If you’ve paid attention to the greats of the industry, it’s actually quite obvious. We, the current toiling collective, simply choose to ignore it. We assume it can’t be that easy. Or perhaps we know better. Or such an old-fashioned idea won’t work in today’s go-go electronic world of mobile tomfoolery. But it is, we don’t and it will. And here it is:

Be interesting. Be relevant.

That’s it. Obvious, yes? We just tend to forget these basic tenets in the crush of deadlines, unmanaged client expectations and marketing myopia. But in the end, they’re all that matter to consumers. (At least from an ad perspective.) Everything else is execution, which is hard enough on its own. As this blog post proves.

Later,

Fox