HookJab has a great illustration of the benefits of editing. As I was telling a client yesterday, sometimes the art of writing is not what you write but what you leave out.
And good content has a painful insight into the way that education has been corrupted by lazy writing. Here’s one example:
“The headteacher and the senior leaders share a clear vision and passion for providing the best education for the students.”
I was a school governor for five years and my wife still is and we constantly came across the same problem. Here is one example of something I had to sign when I was a governor:
“The Governing Body are agreeing this budget as the financial mechanism to support the education priorities of the school as identified in the School Development Plan and will adhere to the best value principles in spending its school funding allocation.”
In English this means “The Governors approve this plan.” Unbelievable.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree about the school governor examples.
But not sure I agree about the graphical examples. Perhaps that’s because the graphic itself is meaningless to me. I thought it was Tommy Cooper’s hat, at first glance! To me, the words alone are better, even though they are longer.
The URL, too, is not obvious. You might recognise it because you are web savvy, and so am I, but even I would need a second glance to see it as a URL. I believe a URL should begin with www.
were both the GNER pieces used? i’d be more impressed with the marketer who’s willing to test two executions in the market than with the brevity of writing…
hopefully they’ve convinced their boss about something.
Ed
Hi Andrew,
I agree with you on the point of www. its an obvious visual cue that you are looking at a URL. the are so many suffix for domains now (.com. .co.uk, .biz etc) that it cannot be relied on to indicate whats being read.
Even without the image ,the three words on the left sum up whats being said on the right excellently.
However, any image of Tommy Coopers hat is going to get my attention every time! more fez please!!
Glad you liked my 5-min design lesson, but can I just publicly apologise for the lack of apostrophe in ‘we know its a URL’! I did realise, but I was too lazy to go back and do another image…
Milly
And why is ‘advance’ capitalized?
I totally agree that the “less is more” version works better. But I can sort of understand what was going on with the development of the “more is less” version:
“Where’s the ‘call to action’? Let’s make sure we actually tell the punters to buy online. Otherwise they might not bother.”
“Yeah, and just giving them the web address isn’t anough either. Let’s not take any risks here: we need to tell them to visit us for more information.”
“And, er, while we’re at it, can I just point out that we’re not actually offering a 10% discount on everything? It only applies to our cheapest advance fares. So maybe we should mention that too, just so we dont get into any trouble…”
the one on the left says “CLICK ME” and the one on the right says “READ ME”
I was intrigued by Milly’s minimalism – we will now be testing two very similar versions of such banners on our home page; just to see which works better.
Good examples. I’d even cut “online.” And I second Ed’s suggestion that both options be tested. But in our haste to cut words let’s not forget the basics: spelling and punctuation. I appreciate Milly’s acknowledgement of the apostrophe error; just wanted to point out that it’s “superfluous,” not “supurfluous.”
Hey Nick,
I’d really enjoy hearing the results of your online experiment
The only criticism I would have of the minimalist graphic ad is that it isn’t minimalist enough.
I hate seeing long, slashed web addresses, particularly with a line break.
No one is going to remember it like that.
http://www.gner.co.uk
would go on one line and be adequate as long as GNER put a big clickable ’10% off’ button on their home page.
You’ve already got a ‘terms and conditions’ line so you’re covered.
As the ad is promoting online discounts, the target audience should be fairly web-literate and the url will be readily recognisable. Many browsers can handle urls without the www prefix, which is more or less a given for standard web addresses.
To my eyes the ‘verbose’ version resembles some seedy small ad in a local paper. The ‘graphical’ ad, while maintaining an air of downgraded splendour, at least wears its benefit on its sleeve.
As for Milly’s apology for the apostrophe gone awol: accepted, but only if we have a further apology for the vowel change in ‘supurfluous’.
If you cut out the words ‘our cheapest advanced fares’, who will say it? If you just say ‘I approve this plan’, how will posterity know why you approved?
If you cut out the words ‘our cheapest advance fares’, who will say it? If you just say ‘I approve this plan’, how will posterity know why you approved?