Communication Tools

Do you know the most frequent of all mistakes in communications? People talk too much. Their error is in thinking that communications means, “Let us tell you everything about ourselves.” By comparison, the impatient Nike found that even “Just do it” was too many words. Its communications alternative is now a single distinguishable check mark and the sound of the “swoosh.” You can hear it as you read these words.

All buyers receive 3,000 to 5,000 messages a day. Yet try to remember three messages from yesterday. It’s called clutter. In one sense, mass communications isn’t communications at all. To cut through the communications clutter, find your swoosh.

The shrewdest professional service firms have actually done just that. Their swoosh is their niche, a mere one or two words that explains what they do best. “M&A” is Skadden’s swoosh. Bankruptcy is Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Take a communications cue from the advertising industry. Communications in marketing can – even for the most sophisticated audience – be as simple as a logo or a symbol, like the bulldog that the law firm Womble Carlyle propagated as an emblem of itself.

In communications, less is truly more.