Last night I went to bed with the TV on. I thought I'd multitask, listening to a PBS documentary about Herbert Hoover and falling asleep at the same time. I was surprised to learn—and eager to tell people at cocktail parties from now on—that Hoover, a self-made orphan, rose to prominence because he actually invented a system for large-scale relief, feeding 9 million starving Belgians throughout World War I!
Oh, how I would have amazed my friends and confused my enemies by talking about how Hoover went down in history as an uncaring laissez-faire Republican who left Americans to starve during the Depression.
I would have, if I hadn't dozed off at about the 14-minute mark.
I tell another anecdote about adult learning and television when I give speeches on speechwriting. It illustrates why it's so important to focus speeches not on three ideas or even two, but rather one, and one alone. (Or, as James Carville once described his job as a communication aide: to "empty full vessels.")
One evening a few years ago I sat down with a glass of wine and started clicking through the channels. I lighted like a butterfly on the beginning of a PBS special on dogs. The documentary would specifically address, the sonorous narrator explained, why dogs, all descended from the wolf, now come in so many shapes and sizes.
Well that's a damned interesting question, I thought to myself, and worthy of the next hour of my life.
Then the narrator explained that there are two theories as to how a relatively homogeneous population of wolves begat the modern canine-ucopia.
Oh, damn, I thought. I know my mind, and I know I'm not going to remember two theories. I'm only going to remember one theory.
But I hunkered down anyway, and listened intently as the narrator explained the first theory. It guesses that when people started domesticating wolves, they picked only the gentlest ones, thereby causing an artificial selection process which mated gentle wolves with gentle wolves and created mutations that eventually led to the chihuahua and other biological abominations that scurry between our feet and bark at nothing and shake, shiver and shit on little pads in the corner. (Don't get me started.)
And what was the other theory? I ask the audience rhetorically.
I don't remember the other effing theory! I bellow in freshly felt frustration.
The lesson for communicators being: It's hard to get stuff into grownups heads. Grownups always go around calling kids "sponges." It's not that kids are sponges. It's just that kids can actually learn stuff. Why? Brain theories aside, they have other advantages: They're not too self-conscious to fully listen, they're not immediately packaging every lesson for some practical use, they're not terrified somebody's going to quiz them and humiliate them for not remembering, and they don't drink wine.
But why kids learn and grownups don't isn't the point.
The point is: If you're gonna get an idea into a grownup's head, you've got to hit hard, straight, often and from different angles.
And since getting ideas in grownups' heads is what we do for a living, it seems we ought to keep this squarely in mind.
Now, what was I saying about Herbert Hoover? Oh yes …..
Or, perhaps, you have to make your message so interesting, i.e. present it a way that the audience can really relate to and digest, that it’s unforgettable?
I mean, frankly, I could give a rat’s ass about Hoover, or why there are so many breeds of dogs, but when someone’s talking about stuff that I’m already interested in, I perk right up and they have much better chance of keeping my attention . . . as long as they ultimately say something that is interesting AND informative.
Yeah, Kristen, but see what you’ve just said here. For me to communicate with you, I have to:
• start on a topic that’s on some drop-down Kristen Ridley menu
• and be “informative” on a subject you already know and like.
In short, I have to talk to you about something you’ve already declared yourself to be interested in, and then I have to tell you something you haven’t learned about it in your four decades on the planet.
A tall fucking order, wouldn’t you say?
Now imagine doing that in an effort of mass communication, and you get my point.
A tall order indeed, David. But – and this will sound heretical, given what I do for a living, but then, it won’t surprise anyone who knows me – I think “mass communication” is mostly a myth anyway.
Think about it – the intent is to get millions [ideally] of unrelated, disparate people to buy, support, do, or fight, something with a single, high level, preferably inexpensive message. I mean, really – whoever initially suggested that idea has to have been joking!
Even today’s big thing – viral communications – is so successful because it isn’t really being embraced by people as a response to the initial release of whatever. No, it’s picked up because someone you KNOW sent it to you or pointed you to it. And then you send it people you know, who will presumably accept it because they know and like or agree with, you, and so on.
To me, the most successful communications will never be “mass”. They will be the things that resonate with me because the person or organization sending it to me either already knows me and has built a relationship with me, or has taken the time to get at least a rudimentary understanding of what might be important to me.
You’re just battling filled-up brains, David. Mine got full a long time ago, so now whenever something new wants to go in, something old has to go out. It seems like there OUGHT to be more space–sort of like the part of my property with trees; it seems available, but I need to go to a lot of effort to clear that space. My brain is like that. It’s just full. So you’re right: make a point and make it hard, because it’s wedging its way in, sort of like sperm racing for the egg. Lots of competition.
I stopped listening at “freshly felt frustration.” I think it was the alliteration that threw me. My friend Mark says he suffers from ADOS – Attention Deficit – Oh, Shiny!
@Kristen: Yes, good point. But given your view on this, how DO you go about doing mass communications for a living?
@Joan: I do not believe in the filled-up brain theory. When you think of all the infinite teeny tiny weird little memories you have in your head, you can’t tell me that one more fact about how a carburetor works won’t fit unless you forget about the time you were five and pushed a raisin in your nose and almost got it stuck. That’s nonsense.
@Eileen: That’s funny. And sad.
Sorry about the raisin, David. That must have hurt.
You say this now. Wait until YOU’re 53!
One more thing, @Kristen: Here’s how I acknowledge the truth that people don’t want to be mass-communicated-to: I keep this blog MOSTLY about communication, so all readers know why they’re here: they have a mutual, declared interest in communication.
Know how I know this matters. Some of my readers–my sister Susan, my friend Polly–have an interest in me, but no declared interest in communication, exactly. Now, of course I think everything I write here is scintillating and if I can meet ’em I can get ’em to read anything.
But you know what my friends and family invariably say? They skip through all the “communication bullshit” to get to the “good stuff,” presumably about Scout and motorcycles, etc.
So I’m not disagreeing with you, Kristen. I’m just saying this is a difficult business we’re in, even if we are happy to work with micro-audiences.
@Eileen. I made that up, probably to cover up an example of even more egregious foolishment.
@Joan. Fair enough.
I agree with, David – brains don’t get full, we just put a lid on them at some point after we graduate university and to get something new in somebody needs to get in there with a screw driver, chip away from crusty old paint and pry the lid open.
Kids don’t have lids.
Reuben: The paint-can lid metaphor is apt!
How do I go about “doing mass communication for a living?” Mostly – I don’t. I really do try to research and understand the audiences I’m trying to reach with my information, and attempt to package it in ways that actually speak to THEM.
That said, I’ve mostly worked in corporate environments, and there are times when you are “instructed” to put something out there that, as a communicator, you know is likely to evoke the “I could give a rat’s ass” reaction. On those occasions, I do the best I can to prepare it in useful, clear ways, throw it at the wall, and hope for the best.
And Rueben’s right [as usual] – if the info is something that catches your fancy, you WILL find someplace to squeeze into your overworked, overstuffed brain. It’s all about that old chestnut: “What’s in it for me?” If “it” has something for you, you’ll embrace it.
How timely. On the heels of this discussion, I found in my email an article outlining “neuromarketing.” Here’s some of that conversation:
“But the Fortune 500 is already dabbling in neuroscience, even if they don’t like to talk about it. Neuroscience will become an increasingly visible ingredient of the marketing soup, and arming yourself with a basic knowledge of brain structure can help you improve communications, reward design and may even impact your segmentation strategy. In the next half-decade, look for neuromarketers to wield increasing influence in two key strategic areas of loyalty marketing.
“In the near future, a basic grounding in the architecture of the brain might become a requirement for designing effective reward catalogs. Traditional focus group research will give way to study of the vast catalog of neurological studies that will tell marketers how to design offers that help customers feel rewarded in ways that they can’t articulate in a survey. Neuroscience will teach us to better manage the communication stream to more directly influence engagement at the subconscious level.”
http://chiefmarketer.com/crm/1027-neuromarketing-loyalty-brain/
So, to Kristen’s point, I guess we’ll attempt to go directly to what stimulates us in those parts of the brain we aren’t even aware of. Does this mean we need to employ neuroscientists to advise our marketing/PR pros? Or do we just revert to subliminal images in communications?
“a basic grounding in the architecture of the brain might become a requirement for designing effective reward catalogs”
All this talk of how to get readers to read reminds me of a story that made the usually reserved Larry Ragan fairly roll with laughter.
One of the many young writers he tried to teach how to teach editing was conducting a seminar on design, and Larry was in attendance.
The young seminar leader showed the audience a two-page spread and explained how its layout steered the reader’s eye from the top left to the bottom of the column and up to top of the next column and across the gutter to the top of the next column and down and up to the top of the next column and then … and this is where Larry started to lose it … “around the corner to the next page.”
I think that was the last time Larry dared to attend a seminar given by his own people.