Communication: Keeping it Simple

I was reading a couple of blogs last week when I came upon a link to a fun video explaining Social Media in Plain English.  Eventually I ended up at the company's web site - http://www.commoncraft.com - and spent the next hour clicking through videos.  After learning a couple of things about social media (and fighting zombies), I started thinking about the simple and direct way the videos communicated. At first glance the videos are nothing but voiceover and hand drawn images, but I couldn't look away.

We are surrounded by news updates and information everywhere we go. If a marketing email, blog, or article doesn't catch my interest in the first two paragraphs, I don't read the rest.   Some ads I see in magazines have so many words or images I don't even know what they are selling. How can we make sure that people are getting the messages we are trying to send?

We can all take a lesson or two from Common Craft - when communicating with our customers, we need to make sure that our messages are clear and concise. Whether we are selling sealant or installation services (or trying to survive a zombie attack), we don't want our messages to get lost in the noise. Creativity in marketing is important, but so is keeping it simple.

Alyssa Kirkman
Sr. Manager