December 11, 2005
Slightly Better Nuanced
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Great communication is an invisible art form.
Let me explain.
I’ve been offline for the better part of a week, during which time I have been watching my son play volleyball at the national school championships in Melbourne (and win a gold medal — you reckon I got a bit ‘passionate’ and ‘emotional’ about that!?!).
A week offline in another city is a useful way of taking a breath of fresh air and taking in a larger view than my predominantly online one.
Many things struck me here, all of which are irrelevant to the city I’m in and of massive importance to us as communicators.
And it all revolves around the concept of tradecraft.
One of the many visually jarring experiences was a large corner store near where we stayed, a large convenience store located on a busy intersection in the heart of the city.
Writ large above the store is an illuminated sign in art deco font proclaiming the store to be a convenience store and café.
What aggrieved me, and I can assure you I am no grouchy grammarian, was that the font used for the VERY large sign above the store had absolutely no relationship to the offerings of the store or its surroundings.
It was another in a very long line of examples of the injudicious use of a font that obviously appealed to either the shop owner or the sign maker. But it had absolutely no relevance to its surroundings.
Another jarring example was the A-frame sign outside an aboriginal artifacts shop located in a tourist honeypot of a market.
The sign bullet pointed the different ‘things’ the shop sold, like boomerangs and paintings and digeridoos. The last in the line of bullet points said. “Aboriginal owned”. Aboriginal owned WHAT? If every bullet point was a ’something’ that the store sold, then what was an ‘aboriginal owned’?
Again, what I saw was an example of something designed perhaps to the owner’s specification - the owner went to a sign shop and said “I want the sign to say this…” and the sign shop dutifully did as it was told, no questions asked or advice given.
Granted, the visual layout of the sign was complementary to the store and its surroundings, but the grammatical inconsistency spoke volumes about a lack of a wordsmith’s involvement.
Why do I mention all this?
Because it brought home to me a fundamental piece of the business communication puzzle that we sometimes forget to mention to our clients and our bosses.
And again I leapfrog to another subject — think of any champion sports player, or a renowned dancer or painter or musician. What separates them from the average weekend athlete or amateur? Not whether they get paid for their work or not. No.
It is precisely because their genius lies in making something incredibly difficult to perform look so irresistibly easy to do. A champion dancer makes you believe you could dance like that; a master musician inspires you to pick up the guitar or take a few piano lessons; the champion tennis player makes you want to dust off your old tennis racquet.
The highly skilled artisan IN WHATEVER FIELD OF ENDEAVOUR makes what they do look so EASY to do that you believe there’s nothing to it. And therein lies their genius.
Now, bring all this back to the business communication world.
What makes one employee newsletter boring and another not? They both use imagery; they both use words; they both use white space.
What makes one a dull waste of time and the other not is that illusive combination of multidisciplinary factors that coalesce to create a masterpiece.
The typography is right, the imagery is right, the proportions white space to content is right; the stock used is right; the words used are right; the layout is right; the strategic intent is right; the delivery mechanism is right and the timing is right.
How can you tell when you have all the pieces of the puzzle in the right place at the right time? You can’t tick a tick-sheet and go “Yes, it is because of X and Y and Z”. It just IS right.
ALL of the jigsaw pieces, from strategy through to tactics through to the recipient’s frame of mind are in alignment.
And getting all of those jigsaw pieces aligned correctly takes skill and good judgment and verve and a large dose of luck.
And it is precisely at those moments when it DOES all come together that the client or your manager or the recipient doesn’t even notice ANY of the elements — they all work so harmoniously together that the recipient doesn’t even realise why they have just done precisely what you strategically intended they do, be it make a purchase, increase their engagement or simply be informed.
It is soooo easy to see when a communication goes wrong, so easy to point out the elements that helped create the cognitive dissonance that resulted in a failed communication.
It should be impossible to see why a communication got it ‘right’, because the elements should fuse together so seamlessly to create exactly the right strategy-led result that dissembling it is impossible.
Which is why I have created a new phrase which I believe explains why one communication or communicator is better than another — “Slightly better nuanced.”
Which is what I hope every reader of this blog takes pride in — creating messages that have slightly more nuances that ‘touch’ the recipient in ways they themselves cannot explain but that drive them to a course of action that we strategically want them to take.
The nuances come from the typography, the imagery, the layout design, the words used and the words unused but hinted at, the stock or other media used, the delivery mechanism used, the timing, the pre-placement of the recipient’s attention and emotional state.
I strive in all of my communications to be ’slightly better nuanced’ — what about you?
p.s. and normal blogging will resume in a couple of days once I get over the 8 hour drive on a stinking hot day — even the car aircon didn’t keep up!
And all email correspondence will be replied to within 48 hours, too…
Stumble it!
Filed under: miscellaneous
7 Responses to “Slightly Better Nuanced”
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December 11th, 2005 at 8:12 pm
[...] Don’t try to explain why you’ll click this link and read the complete post. Just let it open your mind and make you strive to communicate as well as Lee does. [...]
December 12th, 2005 at 11:52 pm
Communications professionals create work that is ’slightly better nuanced’
It seems everyone has an opinion these days about the role professional communicators should play — if any — in a changing world.
Some say PR is dead. Others say public relations professionals should be “customer ombudsmen.”
December 14th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
[...] John Wagner and Todd van Hoosear have been commenting on their blogs about my original suggestion that good communications and communicators are ’slightly better nuanced’. [...]
December 19th, 2005 at 7:05 am
Thats one of your better posts
December 19th, 2005 at 7:28 am
Heh you took the words right out of my mouth…
August 31st, 2006 at 4:30 am
[...] It is because, if done right, a picture can add an additional layer of nuance (and here and here) to the post. Which reminded me of that old saying that a picture paints a thousand words. [...]
September 2nd, 2006 at 6:11 am
Very good reading. Peace until next time.
WaltDe