It is wired in to the human psyche – that we try and tell as much as we can about ourselves when the situation demands it. The personality traits don’t matter. If we need to speak about ourselves, we try and cram as much as we think it ‘can’ be and not what it actually ‘should’ be. So it is with marketing communications – be they ads, brochures or any of the marketing material. Put as much as we can is the dictat. The product or service short of solving world hunger or poverty is seen to be doing everything else and has all the properties of all the superheroes put together. And even for a moment it is not being argued that it is pure fluff. It may be true. But what actually registers with the intended audience?

There are thousands of products and services. Millions of communication that are floating. So if you have 2 seconds to catch your audience’s eyeball what will you do? Will you rollout your resume or convey one simple message? How many times have we said “put the product image here, put the benefits as bullet points, make the logo bigger, put a blurb for the pricing, give at least 3 CTA’s (call to actions – phone, email, website), put 3-4 benefit words in the headline, make the background brighter and colourful, and with the remaining space put an emotional copy”? You get the drift? What is going to register with the audience?

Having a laser sharp focus on the message is very critical. And the importance grows with the ticket value of the media. TV ads in cricket matches have the highest reach and hence the highest cost. You have 20 seconds to say something. You say your most important point. No fluff. No nonsense. If you are on social media, you still have to give only one message per creative but you have the liberty to put as many creatives as you want – however that does not mean you do 20 posts a day. Having tons of information as if it is life or death is not effective at all. Rather it has a counter productive effect of “what is this crammed message”.

Not just marketing communications. You might have heard the term ‘elevator pitch’ – essentially an idea that you need to convey and convince to an investor within the span of time that an elevator takes to go from one floor to another. The importance of focused messaging is slowly going down. The thinking that “maximise the marketing spend by talking as much as you can when you have the opportunity” is leading to many a bad communication.

If you are focused communication hits the bull’s eye, you will get another opportunity for a little more in-depth communication and the journey goes on. But if you have put off your target audience with a ‘resume-based’ communication, you do not have that second, third and many other chances.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination. – Louise Brooks