Less is More

Recently, Public Relation Tactics published an article by Ann Wylie entitled “Less is More” – a guide on how to manage information overload. Wylie describes how we face 5,000 attempts to gain our attention every day. Prompted by my curiosity, I look around my desk and see the iced tea I got over lunch. On the cup alone is an advertisement for the gas station from which I purchased my tea, as well as one for another soft drink. Two attempts within arm’s reach.

So the question becomes,“With all this information confronting us every day, how do we as PR practitioners and marketers make our messages stand out?” Wylie suggests the answer may lie not in what your message says, but rather what it doesn’t.

Keep it short. Social media outlets such as Twitter force us to do this – keeping our messages to 140 characters or less. But did you know that it is better to limit your tweet to 129 characters? This allows your followers to retweet and comment on your tweet without going over the 140 character limit.

Social media, moreover, is not the only thing forcing us to keep our messages shorter. The trend these days is to keep other forms of communications brief as well. Whereas the average press release limit used to be 400 words in print, it is now at 250 words. Let’s face it. News editors get thousands of pitches a day. Do they really have time to read a 400-word release?

Another example is Procter & Gamble who limits internal memos to a single page.

Do you agree? Where else do you think less is truly more?