Ever seen an ad on social media that made you wonder, “What on earth was that company thinking?” Or read an email from a charity that made you tear up—and make a donation—in the blink of an eye?
Almost every human on earth is bombarded with thousands of messages per day. Only a few get remembered. There’s an art, and a bit of science, to making yours stick.
A Better Way to Say That explores why some messages work and others don’t. Once a month we’ll dissect the trends, technologies, and Weird Tricks that shape how people are communicating with each other in 2024—and what that means for your organization.
August is famously a slow month in the world of comms. From journalists to CEOs, almost everyone is either on vacation or wishing they were. It’s a great time to send emails if you like receiving OOO messages that someone hastily typed on their iPhone right before takeoff.
It’s also the 1st birthday of Pisano Slater Enterprises, give or take a couple days!
When we (Annmarie & Nick) founded this agency last year, we had a pretty straightforward idea of how we’d run our business: do good work with our own hands, communicate honestly, and treat people fairly. We thought this would be the simplest path to earn a decent living and contribute something to human society.
After a year of this experiment, here’s what we’ve found:
Agency life can sometimes resemble a political campaign: as soon as a client signs, the clock starts ticking on when they’ll walk. Much like a senator who spends all day chasing new donors instead of serving their current constituents, it’s hard for an agency with a constantly-revolving roster to prioritize their actual job.
With the exception of one fixed-term project, PSE has had a 100% renewal rate among our clients. We think that reflects well on the quality of the work we’ve done for them.
Hidden fees and surprise bills are the microplastics of 21st century existence*. They’re everywhere, and avoiding them often feels futile. So you just accept that your $10 pizza somehow ended up costing $25, and swear to never order from that shop again.
We dislike being on the receiving end of this, so we decided to try a radically different strategy: give people a price that’s fair for both of us, and stick to that. Have we left some money on the table? Maybe. Enough to worry about? Not at all!
*So are actual microplastics, but you get the idea.
This goes against the wisdom of countless free e-books and LinkedIn thought leadership posts. But as illustrated by our clients’ experiences over the last year, “actually doing stuff and then sharing the results in the right places” does more to move the needle than a dozen self-flattering fluff pieces or awkward IG Lives.
Case in point: in the last year, our clients have won awards for innovative education programs and helping their state rebuild after a natural disaster and advancing human rights. Words and actions are equally important parts of the winning recipe—even the best storyteller can’t tell a compelling story about nothing.
So we feel fortunate to work with a group of people who are out there in the world, doing stuff. And we look forward to doing more stuff in this new year of PSE’s existence.
Because the last word is rarely the end of the conversation.
Much like penguins, we enjoy bringing you little gifts to show we care:
The Taproot Foundation—a platform for connecting nonprofits with pro bono consultants—is hiring a Senior Director of Marketing & Communications. Fully remote, $120k-130k a year, lots of benefits.
Nonprofit news funders are cracking down on Palestine-related coverage at outlets across the country.
If humans can make a line dance out of the Law & Order theme song, rumors of our creative demise might be greatly exaggerated.
Here’s what one of us is currently reading:
“They pried open a barrel and divided out their portion of hard bread for the next eight days which came to just under five pounds each. Previously a barrel had only to last five or six days. Now they began to think about how to make the provisions they'd set out with that summer last a full year or more.
The saddest discovery that day however, was that their beer was already running short.”
Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World - Andrea Pitzer
There comes a time every summer where you just want to chill out and read a book on the beach. One way to approach this task is to go into the nearest grocery store and find the paperback with the least-objectionable cover, but I’m here to suggest a totally different genre for your warm-weather escapism: the natural disaster drama.
This is a wide genre that encompasses a lot, from Age of Exploration hurricanes to Everest accidents, reported journalism to lightly fictionalized roman-à-clefs, but Iceboundconnects two of its hallmarks: the polar ice disaster, and shipwrecks.
Pitzer is a fantastic researcher and intrepid journalist, and pulled this nonfiction book out of historical archives, ship logs, journals, and her own travels to the remote Russian island of Novaya Zemlya. It’s a gripping read that goes down even faster than grade-level fiction (I ripped through this in two days). The detail work is great, as you can see in the quote above. I no longer need to wonder what John Barents ate on the day that he died, even though we don’t really know where or when he was born. But ultimately, it’s especially fun to sit safely on the sand, Spindrift in hand, reading about how the ocean will kill you—as if you needed a reminder.
