Victor Hugo, father of the great French hero, Les Miserables, is credited with the phrase, “I’m sorry this is so long, I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”

And I had to shorten that for the headline, because a large search engine says it’s too long for SEO.

(There’s a line there about taking the pith, but I’m not going to use it.)

There’s something lovely about the way the brain distils anything down to the essentials – if we only give it time.

Neil French always said his secret for writing a great ad was to take the brief, and then get horrendously drunk.
In the morning – the only bits of the brief he remembered were then the ones he’d base his work on.

Because – usually – the brain will remember the bits that connected. And discard the logic that surrounds it. Allowing the person (Neil, in this case) to reconstruct the message in a different way.

So the person reading the communication gets two viewpoints for the price of one.

Allowing them to triangulate their own meaning from what they read.

Allowing them to fall in love on their own – rather than trying to force them into bed.

(Sorry. Should have given that last line the overnight test.)

 

Originally published by Brand Clarity, May 2010