Life As Elevator Speech
May 31st, 2008 by Hugh KennedyI was in New York recently listening to some focus groups on enterprise security. The people on the other side of the glass oversaw the safety of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees. They were smart and articulate (and God bless them, they also liked our creative). When we came to the channel survey portion of each group, it was striking how many subjects enthusiastically supported the idea of a one-minute video or even a one-minute podcast as a call to action.
“Sure,” one of the more cranky executives said, “I’d give a minute of my time to hear more.”
Their reactions lingered in my mind as I was perusing my new addiction The Week, news magazine for the age of the shortened attention span, and smiled at an editorial cartoon whose caption ran something like, “My fellow members of the class of 2008, I am reminded as I stand here of one of the great text messages of our time.” I remembered as I sat there that one of our other technology clients was considering a series of full-length Web casts, but that they were slashed to ten minutes each before we even finalized an editorial calendar. Another client recently spoke admiringly of the folks at 2-Minute Explainers when they tossed his script back in his face because it was ten seconds too long and told him to cut it.
As for the security client, when we got into the heart of the discussion about the podcasts, those on the five-minute side of the question quickly gave in when they realized a) we don’t need one of those “intro ditties” (to quote someone in the room); b) we don’t need someone intoning for 60 seconds about the qualifications of the speaker when the speaker can do it him/herself; and c) if anyone is still thirsty for more, we’ll have at least half a dozen podcasts in the can.
These days, we’re more apt to take a 15-page white paper and distill it into a five-page ebook. For the record, we do have a client who is working on a 250-page book, but he has quickly realized he needs a ghost writer since he has too much going on to complete it himself. Of course, we’re already planning on how we can chop it into dozens of small pieces and serve it up in multiple formats.
As long as the quality is there, you don’t need all day to make your point.
But I’ve probably gone on too long already.
July 1st, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Re: 2-Minute Explainers
We do tell people that if they add ten words, we’re going to cut out ten words — because it gets a little rushed beyond 260 words or so in one of our 2-Minute Explainers). But we make the adjustment by rewriting and trying to make the visuals work harder. I’d like to throw a script in the face of whoever told you we throw scripts in people’s faces