Communicate small, not big
- Thu, April 28 2011
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
The bigger the scale of what you’re communicating, the smaller the impact on your audience.
Do not overwhelm people with numbers and statistics. They shift people into an analytical frame of mind, which disconnects them from the emotion of an individual story.
If you want to communicate with your audience on the scale they comprehend — a human scale — then take the big issue your organization addresses and communicate it through stories about one person, one whale, one tree. Make that individual relatable — less than perfect.
Small — NOT big! — is what evokes feeling, and feeling is what prompts action.
Comments
This is so perfectly timed, as we are getting ready to give a talk on using social media to find and connect with high value donors. We use the numbers as a small piece of the set up. But the power is in the relationships. Nicely said!
This is so true. I can save one tree. I can help one person.
Great post, love it. It’s all about simplicity, isn’t it. Why is it hard to focus like this? Could it be that without a strategy behind your communications - you don’t know what to say no to?
Thanks, Beth. It sure is! I agree with your point: when you don’t know where you’re going, any path works. not a good thing.
This echoes a marketing research project I was just working on. The Elaboration Likelihood Model, a cornerstone of advertising psychology, says that individuals who are not personally involved at the time of receiving the message will focus on more “peripheral” cues, such as emotions, message source, and visual appeals. Utilizing these appeals will result in longer-lasting attitudes.