poseycorp helps innovators become great communicators. (Sometimes by sending out helpful stuff in a newsletter.)
ISSUE 59
Less is still more
"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."
- I thought Mark Twain said this first, but Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher, beat him to it in 1657
Regardless of where the Coronavirus takes us, I believe we’re facing a tectonic
plate shift in the way we do business, connect, and communicate with each other.
Right now, organizations are either canceling or taking events virtual - user conferences, sales kick offs, industry shows. Nearly all of these virtual events will be scaled-down versions.
Even after the virus ebbs and things return to "normal", we may find we can successfully reach employees, customers, partners, and influencers with much less content via the small screen. More importantly, we may find that they PREFER to hear from us that way.
Less is more and less will be even more more as we adjust, post-crisis. Just a few data points:
Short video is it. Quibi, which launches on April 6, is a multi-billion-dollar bet on compelling mobile content that’s 10 minutes or less. Here’s a frothy piecein the New York Times listing who’s on board. Everybody is on board.
Books, not so much. On March 4, ViacomCBS announced that Simon & Schuster, one of the country’s venerable publishers, is up for sale because books are "not a core asset of the company," according to CEO Robert M. Bakish.
No one
wants to read your long email either. Aaron Orendorff’s bracing New York Times piece, Your Colleagues Don’t Read Anything You Write. Here Are 8 Ways to Change That, makes an argument for less. "The less we write, the more valuable our writing becomes." "We long for clarity, for other people to say what they mean in as few, short words as possible." Yup.
In the literary world, one of the most popular genres is Flash. Both fiction and non-fiction pieces of 100 words, 250 words, 750 words are hot. It is possible to say a lot in a small space. As Stephen King says, "To write is human, to edit is divine."
Here’s the thing - you can cut a 3,000 word customer brochure or press release down to 750 words. You can distill a two-hour keynote extravaganza down to 30 minutes of powerful, shareable content.
When you say less, what’s essential for your audience grabs them - even (maybe especially) on a small screen. When you deliver your message via a platform they love, they receive it differently. The message and the medium merge.
All of our norms are being disrupted now. On the other side of these intense and daunting changes, we’ll find the seeds of some brilliant new ways of communicating. Let’s look for and embrace them now!
On poseyblog
We're talking about strengthening your public speaking skills:
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If you’d like great results, schedule a conversation with me! It’s easy! Reach me at inquiries@poseycorp.com.
Your business must scale, and you must scale with it. Great communicators create the change they want to see in the world. poseycorp helps innovators build powerful messages and the skill to deliver them so they can break through the noise and be heard! Lisa Poulson, poseycorp’s principal, is expert at helping innovators scale by becoming great communicators.
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