In 1916, Robert Updegraff published a modest business story about Oliver B. Adams, known throughout the advertising world as “Obvious Adams”. The story revealed the forgotten power of the obvious in commercial strategy: Adams possessed no mysterious flair or temperamental genius. While other copywriters spun elaborate literary prose to turn ordinary fifteen-cent cakes into “food for angels”, Adams merely looked at the situation, tasted the cake, and suggested giving people fresh sample slices so they could judge the flavour for themselves.

When his agency struggled to explain canned peaches in dense, multi-page advertisements, Adams laid out six simple steps under one unmistakable headline: 

“Six Minutes from Orchard to Can”.

When hat adverts became lost in full-length portraits of fashionable men, he took a pair of shears, sliced away everything except the brim and a smiling face, and let the product speak directly to the customer.

He doesn’t get carried away from the facts; he just looks them squarely in the face and then proceeds to analyse, and that is half of the battle.

Why Modern Strategy Ignores the Power of the Obvious

Over a century later, modern business communication seems to have developed a collective fear of the obvious. When a campaign stumbles or engagement drops, the instinct is rarely to step back and ask the uncomfortable, straightforward questions.

Instead, organisations add more layers. We retreat behind a smokescreen of complexity: nesting twelve-stage nurture tracks, building multi-touch attribution matrices, and decorating pitch decks with impenetrable corporate jargon. Much like the synthetic, bloodless copy generated by today’s automated tools—which we examined when breaking down why AI in brand communication cannot replace human intuition—complexity often feels reassuring because it looks like hard work.

Rediscovering the Power of the Obvious: Paper Makers vs. Paper Users

Consider Adams’ visit to a fine bond paper mill. The mill owner was desperate for clever, dazzling concepts to outshine competitors. Adams toured the floor, noted that the paper was made with pure filtered water, dried in clean lofts, and inspected sheet by sheet by hand—and wrote simple, direct statements explaining precisely that. When the owner protested that every quality mill made paper the same way and that the facts were common knowledge, Adams asked:

“To whom are you advertising—paper makers or paper users?”

As documented in the original text of The Story of Obvious Adams, that single question contains the timeless cure for modern marketing fatigue. We spend countless hours talking in industry shorthand, crafting clever slogans for our peers rather than speaking plain truth to our buyers.

Embracing the power of the obvious does not demand louder claims, more convoluted funnels, or endless technical acrobatics. It demands the rare confidence to be direct. Radically simple, honest narrative is not the easy option—it is the hardest, most commercially potent work you will ever do.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

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