messages

Who’s ‘Me’?

You can’t write a WIIFM without the M

If you wanted to keep teens from smoking weed, what message might you communicate?

One health organization, reports Guy Kawasaki in his book Enchantment, used the message that young people who smoked weed were five times more likely to engage in sex.… Read the full article

Information overload by the numbers

Are your readers drowning in the deluge?

Talk about TMI.

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[1] Richard Alleyne, “Welcome to the information age – 174 newspapers a day,” The Telegraph, Feb.… Read the full article

Reel them in with readability

Yamaha Marine Group communicator makes message 164.57% easier to read

When Austin Roebuck needed to get the word out about how a new bill in Congress would affect his audience of fishing fanatics, he first tried a traditional message.… Read the full article

Overcome information overload

Readers face the equivalent of 174 newspapers a day

Talk about TMI: Your readers receive the data equivalent of 174 newspapers a day — ads included, according to a study by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.… Read the full article

Make messages move faster

Partial sentences make your copy clip along faster

Mrs. Webb, your 3rd-grade teacher, probably counseled you to avoid sentence fragments.

Mrs. Webb was wrong. Sentence fragments can help you:

Create drama
Make a transition
Emphasize an important idea
Change the pace of your piece
Make your copy sound conversational
And, of course, make sentences shorter

Write fragments like Paul Harding.

… Read the full article

You’re one in a million

Messages a year, that is

Information, these days, is hard to escape. Even formerly message-free spaces now bombard us with data.

Our audience members see messages printed on water cooler cups, embossed into their pizza’s cheese — even tattooed onto human skin.… Read the full article