Public communications is unlike molecular biology in many ways, but we’d like to suggest the most obvious difference is the level of linguistic complexity required.
If you want people to buy your Thing, what they want to know is how it will make their lives easier. If you’re asking them to support your Project, what they care about most is how nice they’ll feel for doing so. If you’re pitching an Idea, the line they’re waiting to hear is: “It will achieve X,Y, and maybe even Z.”
To borrow a concept from Axios,* your audience wants Smart Brevity.
*Not to give their often bland, oversimplified executivespeak too many flowers. But it is a great phrase ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
However, when many other organizations are selling similar Things or promoting the same kind of Project or advocating analogous Ideas for achieving a goal, there’s a temptation to make yours sound more sophisticated (and presumably impressive).
Chances are good that, at some point in your career, you’ve been on the receiving end of such a spiel. And if you’re like most people, it probably left you confused and annoyed.
On the other hand, you might also remember a time when someone (or some website, brochure, email, etc.) helped you understand a complex subject by explaining it in a direct, concise way that respected your intelligence.
Maybe your metaphorical lightbulb moment was accompanied by a sense of relief, or even gratitude. Such experiences are rare enough that people tend to remember them.
Which kind of proves our point about the nature of effective comms.
Because the last word is rarely the end of the conversation.
Much like penguins, we enjoy bringing you little gifts to show we care:
When a new Underwater Photographer of the Year gallery drops, you know it’ll get headline billing here. Cuddling seal pups, massive aquatic caves, sperm whales chasing sharks!
“1982: A day in a Parisian bistro” is just one of the many delights awaiting you in the INA Paris Vintage archive, a strong contender for YouTube’s most soothing rabbit hole.
The ImPact, a nonprofit that helps families make impact investments more effectively, is hiring a Communications Manager: fully remote, $85k-$100k a year.
Here’s what one of us is currently reading:
“When some systems are stuck in a dangerous impasse, randomness and only randomness can unlock them and set them free.”
Antifragile is not Taleb’s most recent book, nor his most celebrated. (If you also find his name familiar without being able to pinpoint why you know it, he’s the author of the 2007 bestseller The Black Swan).
But it was the most available on the Libby library app during a rainy Saturday last month, and the title sounded eerily appropriate for the current moment. Several hundred pages later, that suspicion was confirmed. Sometimes judging a book by its cover* pays off.
*Or the words on it, anyway.
Taleb’s main focus in Antifragile is examining what makes people and systems not just “resilient” to chaos, but strengthened by it. If you’re rolling your eyes—an understandable reaction for anyone who’s been conscious over the last several years—it might be a relief to learn Taleb is not making a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps argument. Instead, he’s offering genuinely useful (if impolitely phrased) insights that feel extra-relevant to surviving times like these.
It’s an excellent read if your usual bookly escapes aren’t offering the relief they usually do.
