Category: Advertising

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In Context

Louis Theroux recently hosted Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle on his Grounded podcast, and part of their conversation was around some of his edgier jokes and the resulting media outrage. Boyle in turn makes a really good point, and it’s one relevant to all of us in professional communications.

Context.

His opinion is, of course something he says to a comedy crowd at 10pm in Newcastle doesn’t read as well in a newspaper as someone has breakfast in Surrey.

Context.

The comedy crowd’s ready for the punchline. Someone reading a paper looking to stoke outrage – and maintain easy content for a week or so – not so much. Of course not. They haven’t (literally) bought in to the joke and the person telling it.

Let’s not forget this principle applies to all communications we put out there; from internal comms to industry to ads and marketing campaigns.

Does your message make sense to your audience in context?

I’ve seen organisational announcements so long some employees literally didn’t read all the way through to the actual announcement.

We’ve all seen ad campaigns so busy celebrating their own creativity the product and brand effectively disappear.

Online copy so bad it seems to forget you know what the internet is and how it works.

Context (to put it scientifically) gives your messaging ooooomph. It makes it more digestible for your audience – and in turn more effective.

Think about what your message means to people. Where it will work best. How and when it will be consumed.

A lot of people – and organisations – forget this. They spend time working on getting the message right to their own minds, and it then becomes an unwinnable challenge to try to force it into places it doesn’t always naturally sit.

The context of your message delivery really matters, and building it into everything you do, or write, or publish, or create, will ensure you’re in a position to really see a return on the investments and resources you use.

To talk to me more about how context is critical to your communications, start with an email to wadehowland@internode.on.net

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Isn’t The Fight Worth It?

The recent discovery of an elite college admission scam in the US was shocking (in scope) but not terribly surprising. An article today was written by a college professor who teaches the ‘entitled students’, complete with advice from staff to new educators.

“Lower your standards,” they advise new colleagues. “The fight isn’t worth it, and the administration won’t back you up if you try.”

This results in an increased workload as staff find themselves

hounded to provide a remedial education on top of an already heavy set of official duties.

In other words – watering down their expertise.

This results in intelligent, highly-educated people having to compromise their abilities and efforts to placate those undeserving of this level of support. From my outsider’s perspective it seems not only damaging, but unsustainable.

It really jumped out as it comes just a day after a tweet from Tom Goodwin (@tomfgoodwin) had me thinking about the parallels in marketing and advertising.

The brutal truth is clients are being given too much say in their creative direction.

The revenue chase sees businesses placing more value on money coming in than work going out, which in turn creates a disproportionately-weighted sense of worth in what clients want and expect.

Despite our experience and education, we often find ourselves in a position of having to defer to people who don’t have the benefit of either of those things. And this is no casual client-bashing. The ability to listen to clients and understand their business and category is a fundamental skill for all marketers and communicators.

But there’s a clear parallel between the influence money has in both marketing and education: both sectors are wilting to accommodate revenue streams. Both risk diluting their ability to deliver the quality they’re meant to. It’s a sense of short-termism so short we can’t see it happening.

The fight is worth it. Our first step as creatives and marketers is to openly acknowledge it as Tom did in his tweet. Only from there can we really address the problem.