AB: All-Round Nice Guy

We live in world of marketing buzz and hype, where we are bombarded daily with hundreds of messages all telling us what is or isn’t good for us. Every day, new ways of ‘cutting through’ the volume of advertisements and marketing hype have to be invented to get some sort of traction in the marketplace - even if only for a short time before the next ‘big thing’ arrives.

Our brain takes in each new message we see or hear with a pre-existing mindset - call it a frame of reference, or just a point of view - so that the new messages we take in are either quickly screened out, or allowed to pass, and so can be slowly absorbed. The numbers vary, but marketers would hope to get you to recognise and respond to their message within a couple of dozen interactions with their communications. The first dozen interactions are almost completely wasted until your brain can begin to recall that it *might* have seen the message somewhere before - only then does a message become prominent enough to justify spending more brain power analysing the message in more detail.

Trying to cut through the crowded world of marketing with your own message is a daunting one - there’s always someone else, and some*thing* else vying for our attention.

The problem for us ‘mere mortals’ is that as businesspeople, we work so closely with our own messages that we get into the bad habit of trusting that ‘if we understand the message, so will others’. Familiarity with our own goals, standards, or processes can lead us to stop highlighting them for others - especially for rank outsiders.

LESS IS MORE, MORE OR LESS…

• When all else fails, apply the KISS theory, and keep it simple. A straightforward message may not get every last feature or benefit of your product or service communicated to your customer, but you will get across both a brief synopsis of what you do AND you’ll have given your customer a relatively quiet spot in the great big world of marketing to, well, pause for a moment before being bombarded again.

• The minimalist approach can almost never be taken to the extreme, even the plainest message makes a statement: “I didn’t want to waste your time - so here’s my message”. It’s a very bold move to say very little, but try to resist the temptation to highlight every part of your message all in one go - prioritise your message, and direct your customer/reader through what’s vital, then what’s important, then finally (and only if you really have to) the fine print.

• Avoid clichés. Trying to stand out by using obvious metaphors or graphics generally doesn’t reinforce your message, but instead can reflect a lack of awareness of what those obvious metaphors are. Where possible, try to communicate your message in a fresh way, and make a clear and bold delineation between your business, and that of your competitor. Many times, a whole industry uses similar colours and obvious metaphors in their advertising, which is a two-edged sword: the only options are to blend in with the crowd and hope for strength in numbers, or to find a unique way of cutting through the messages of your industry. Reducing your reliance on clichés is one way to reduce the sameness of your own messages. The only saving grace for the cliché is if you’re actually being clever enough to display your knowledge of the cliché in question, and you’re trying to get a chuckle out of flaunting your usage of it… the anti-cliché…? or the Clayton’s cliché…?

As businesspeople living in this world of over-abundant marketing and hype, the two biggest challenges we face are firstly making our products or services truly unique and worthwhile - and not just over-marketed and under-delivered - and then, secondly, finding a method and a message to be able *tell others* what is truly unique and worthwhile about our business.

Determining how best to communicate a message is generally an iterative process - gradual refinements and exploring different avenues - but sometimes a rethink is required to assess whether we are communicating our message clearly and succinctly.

We can’t always assume that other people will know what our strengths are, or what the main features of our product are. We have to communicate our message clearly, every time, in the hope that maybe, just maybe, our customers will actually take the time to absorb it, and respond to it in the way we intended.

Marketers are eternal optimists. We live in hope.

AB out.