Listen.

I confess I can be a ruthless editor in all matters relating to communications. Not only do I ban most jargon from pieces that come my way, but I also tend to eliminate unnecessary information and redundant words, because they can reduce the potential impact of a message.

There’s a reason I called this Ad Rem Communications: the purpose of modern communication is primarily to get to the point. Few people read long pieces today, or a magazine cover to cover any longer; more to the point, even fewer will pause, let alone read every post on a feed, regardless of the platform. With so much on offer, we neither have the time nor the inclination to read or watch anything that doesn’t immediately grab us.

As we see in the latest iterations of social media platforms, with audiovisual content invading our screens, the first few seconds of a TikTok video are the most crucial: fail to attract and your viewer will have already swiped up before you even got to making your point. On giants like Facebook, the scrolling is just as fast, with many posts remaining unread and unexpanded because they didn’t trigger the wish to click on “see more.”

You are not immune to this on other platforms either, or with other tools. Rambling, disjointed emails will be skimmed or ignored, and many speakers will have known the struggle of getting through a speech as an audience begins to disengage, becoming visibly uninterested and indifferent.

The adage that you only have one chance to make a first impression becomes even stricter in the field of comms; in a sea of content, you will often only have one chance to make any impression at all - good or bad. Unless you’re a public institution, or a superstar with millions of followers who will seek your posts no matter what, you need to create ad rem messaging, within a greater ad rem communications plan. Your brand and your mission should have an overarching message; make sure that what you send out is fitting, relevant, and to the matter.

In all your communications, for every output and on every platform, choose your words wisely, and get to the point.

June 2022

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