Anyone for tennis?

As a regular devotee of this corner of cyberspace you will not be at all surprised that businesses seek out Cicero’s advice, opinion and views on all things marketing. I can assure you it is true and I am currently dispensing marketing advice to businesses on a global scale. You get it free. Others have to pay. I do hope you appreciate this.

Last week I was talking to one business about tennis balls. I know that at this point your eyes are no doubt turning heavenward and you might no doubt ne anxious to go an explore the rest of cyberspace for some enlightenment and wisdom but bear with me. It will be worth it.

If I was to throw a bucket of tennis balls at you, how many do you think you would be able to catch? One? Two? Three? Ten? Twenty? I would guess that you might catch one or two at most. Am I right? Try it and if you can catch more than five please do write and let me know but I am pretty sure that the number you would catch would be in low single figures.

Now replace tennis balls with marketing messages and you might start to see where I am going with this.

For our marketing communications to be successful and to have any chance of cutting through the clutter and noise that dazzles and bombards us, we should assume that our brains, as well developed as they are, well yours at least, are capable of catching preferably one, but maybe two at most, tennis balls or communication messages at any one time. Any more confuses and overwhelms our central processing units and when this happens they have a tendency to shut down and our well crafted and carefully designed communication messages get lost and wasted.

I was using my tennis ball metaphor last week to explain to a business why it should not combine marketing literature in mail shots to save money; to illustrate what was wrong with a website which overloaded and bombarded the visitor with content to extent that its core purpose was lost; and to highlight what was wrong with a marketing and sales approach which gave customers 25 reasons to buy a given product or service.

In trying to make sure that it gave something to everyone it ran risk of giving nothing to no one, of standing for nothing, of being uncompelling and unconvincing and irrelevant.

I think they got the message when I threw a basket of tennis balls at the chief executive. No kidding. And for the record he caught one though I think he was rather taken aback at my rather physical approach to the development of an effective communications strategy. I guess that will be one business not seeking Cicero’s advice again.

Effective communications is single minded. Single minded in what it is trying to say, what product or service it is trying to promote; single minded to whom it is trying to talk to; and single minded in the result it is seeking to achieve. And that means making choices. And that is the secret of great marketing. Marketing is about choices. Choosing what to do, what to say and to whom.

Otherwise it is all about throwing tennis balls out which fail to be caught.

And if you doubt or question this thinking, think of all the advertising inserts that businesses pay for and which carpet bomb your lounge when you open the weekend papers. The volume overwhelms us and none get read. Maybe less is more and one carefully placed advertising insert might get read. This is the one tennis ball we can all catch.

Anyone out there got an opinion on this they want to share with my global readership?

Is it me?

Each and every day the enviro- and eco-mentalists exhort, preach and nanny us to do our bit to save the planet from the ravaging effects of global warming which is, of course, rather ironic given the cold and snowy weather of the past few days. Anyway I like to do my bit to save the planet. But has anyone else noticed how a 4 line e-mail is converted into a tome consuming almost as much paper as ‘War and Peace’ once printed. Why does this happen? I am well past the point of technophobia where I would print off every e-mail but sometimes it is unavoidable and when this happens not only do I get the critical information I wanted but also all the small print and disclaimers and threats of dire retribution if I am reading this e-mail when it is intended for someone else. Result-we consume more paper than we need to. I don’t get all this verbiage when I write I letter and send it by the traditional methods so why does someone think I need it when I read an e-mail message.

And so global warming is all the fault of the corporate lawyers. QED.

Have a great week.

Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.