Is it possible for an individual to purchase a product, cast a vote, or contribute to charity, before making the conscious decision (however impromptu it may be) to do so? The obvious answer is no; a reality that reveals the inherent flaw personified by the term, sales collateral.

As a phrase, sales collateral is understood to mean media and activities such as print literature, radio & television advertising, eMail campaigns, mobile & desktop internet promotions, trade show appearances & exhibits, robocalls, search engine optimization, etc.

The ubiquitous use of sales collateral is fostered by the belief that sales collateral increases awareness, which in turn leads to improved sales, more votes, greater charitable contributions, etc.

We’ll address “collateral” a little later in this article. For now lets address the belief that increasing awareness leads to improved sales, more votes, greater contributions, etc. Is the fact that awareness precedes the decision to act, evidence that awareness induced the decision to act? If that question comes across as enigmatic, consider the following.

Universally known company A is successful. Company B is less successful than A. Therefore B increases its sales collateral, expecting that increased awareness will lead to increased sales. That logic seems sound as far as it goes, which isn’t very far. By example: All living things need water. A tulip needs water. Therefore a tulip is a living thing. But what happens when you substitute “tulip” with “swimming pool?”

Obviously, the conclusion that all living things need water does not mean that water can make everything into a living thing. The same is true with awareness, and it doesn’t take products anywhere near as disparate as tulips and swimming pools to prove it.

Most people enjoy eating ketchup. Most people who eat ketchup buy Heinz. Hunts also makes ketchup. Therefore if Hunts increased its awareness to the same level as Heinz, Hunts would sell as much ketchup as Heinz. Ridiculous! How long would Hunts delay in increasing awareness if increasing awareness worked? Also, if increasing awareness worked, and Hunts didn’t do it, Del Monte sure would.

Ask any life-long Chevy owner to name five other car makers and he or she will be able to do so easily and instantly — that’s awareness! The pivotal question is, why, being equally aware of Ford, Toyota, Honda, BMW, Chrysler, Jaguar, KIA, etc., does the die hard Chevy owner repeatedly choose Chevy? It’s because being made aware and being persuaded are no more closely related as, oh let’s say, the sport of lawn bowling and the sport of mixed martial arts.

It’s true that lawn bowling and mixed martial arts can both be classified as a sport, but there is absolutely no further similarity between the two.

The problem with words like “awareness” and “sport” is that they are proxies — words that by way of approximation loosely represent disparate things. Often the approximation is so loose that the proxy utterly fails to represent the issue(s) at hand.

Awareness does not cause people to buy, vote, or contribute, persuasion does. A promotional effort designed to increase awareness is the same as going hunting with blanks. There will be plenty of noise and others will know you’re around. But when the noise fades, nothing much will have been accomplished.

As for collateral; the pure definition of collateral is, “secondary, additional but subordinate.” That definition forces a second pivotal question. If the decision to act always proceeds the act, then in what sense can sales collateral be seen as secondary, additional, or subordinate?

The truth is that sales collateral is not secondary or additional, and it is certainly not subordinate. It’s the other way round. Successful products, candidates, causes, etc., are subordinate to sales collateral. Further, the talent to recognize the proper role of sales collateral, and to properly create it, requires greater skill and effort than that required to develop the actual product, candidate, cause, etc. How could it be otherwise?

It is only by connecting persuasively that sales collateral can motivate a sale, a vote, or a contribution. The connection is primary, for it is only after (and if) a connection is made that a product, candidate, or cause will get a chance to deliver on the connection.

As long as the belief persists that awareness is the same as persuasiveness, sales collateral will continue to be casually prepared and indifferently distributed. And the quantity of noise and spam will continue to grow, as will the quantity (and size) of trash containers in offices, in convention centers, and on trade show floors.

Sales Collateral Isn't
January 29, 2013 by Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Version: 1776977C(R04) • Feb 19, 2014
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How can you claim that bullet slides should be eliminated from presentations when 95 out of 100 presenters use bullet slides in their presentations? That question summarizes much of the follow-up correspondence we received to our recently published article entitled, Communication Insanity.

Our answer — not only to the bullet slide question but to every occurrence of replication — is to point out that mindless adherence to familiar practices is common, even when it fails to be productive.

The fact (if it is one) that 95 out of 100 presenters use bullet slides does not rule out the likelihood that 95 out of 100 presenters fail. And we’re not talking theoretically here.

Eight out of ten new product launches fail within three months. The reason why is clear. It’s because the messages used to promote the products do not persuade customers to give them a try. When a new product isn’t tried it’s the communication promoting the product that has failed, not the product itself.

Presentation failure is likewise. A presentation is a failure when audience members do not take the action(s) desired by the presenter. It’s the fault of the presenter when such a failure occurs. It’s not the fault of the audience. Often the failure is due to a lack of impact; a condition that is made worse by bullet slides.

Impact is thorny because it simultaneously demands two things. The first is articulation, the second is talent. Articulation means mastery of the technical skills for clear communication. Talent is knowing what properly articulated content will be persuasive.

Talent is subjective, but articulation is absolutely not. And everything about a bullet slide renders a presenter inarticulate. Here’s why.

Most bullet slides contain more than six facts. That doesn’t work because the human mind is only capable of remembering about 6 new facts at one time. This discovery was first documented in 1885 by Herman Ebbinghaus.

Ebbinghaus went on to demonstrate that a violation of the six fact rule will cause facts to be discarded to the trash heap of memory. We call this phenomenon the six fact trash heap rule. An under-recognized downside to the six fact trash heap rule lies in not knowing which facts will be discarded. The discarded fact(s) could be the most important in the presentation.

The six fact trash heap rule raises an interesting question. Could a single six fact bullet slide comprise an entire presentation?

The answer is yes, if the six fact trash heap rule is considered in isolation. However, we have attended and counseled the creation of innumerable presentations and none of them consisted of a single slide.

If a single six fact bullet slide presentation did exist, it would likely ignore another important quality of an articulate presentation, the ability of audience members to recall what the presentation was about.

Recall is dramatically increased when a presenter simultaneously reads aloud the same words an audience member is reading to himself or herself. This is called the multiple sensory reinforcement rule and it is a well established fact.

Unfortunately read rate is twice that of speech rate. That’s a problem because multiple sensory reinforcement is only possible when the presenter speaks the words displayed on a slide at exactly the same time as the audience reads them. A mere 4 seconds into the display of text, audience members will have read about 18 words, while a presenter (speaking quickly) will be on word 10 and falling further behind.

This is disastrous because the mind prioritizes when disparate information arrives simultaneously through separate senses. The written word is the minds top priority. The spoken word is second. That’s why people read before they listen and always give preference to written words when they differ from spoken words.

You can test this phenomenon the next time you are at a restaurant seated with 4 or 5 other people. Observe what happens if the waiter hands out menus while simultaneously announcing the specials of the day. Without fail the first persons receiving menus will begin reading and will, at the end of the waiter’s announcement, ask, “What was that first couple of specials you mentioned?” It is likewise in a presentation. We’ll call this the menu rule.

The menu rule is decisive. The more there is on a slide to read, the less the audience will listen to the presenter. Incidentally, the menu rule is why notes or copies of a presentation should be distributed after the presentation is over, not before.

Back to the single bullet slide presentation. If the decision is made to deliver a single bullet slide presentation, the presenter should display the slide, sit down, remain quiet until the audience has finished reading, and then ask for questions from audience members.

Of course that situation denies the presenter the opportunity to deliver a persuasive presentation. Projecting a bullet slide in a quiet room isn’t delivering a presentation, it’s disseminating facts. If that’s the intent, cancel the presentation and send out a report.

We now have three reasons why bullet slides are inarticulate. The reasons are (1) the six fact trash heap rule, (2) the multiple sensory reinforcement rule, (3) the menu rule. We’re not done.

Bullets beget more bullets. A multi-slide presentation we were recently asked to review contained seven bullet list slides, each of which had at least NINE bullets.

Sixty-three bullets seems to us to be just a bit less ammunition than all the armament the allied forces had with them during the invasion of Normandy. We don’t know the origin of the term “snowball effect,” but we can well imagine that it came from the deteriorating mood of an audience that was forced to endure the dashed hopes brought on by “another boring bullet slide” six times over.

Bullet slides are a pure and perfect example of inarticulate communication. They break the six fact trash heap rule. They violate the multiple sensory reinforcement rule due to the mismatch between read rate and speech rate. And they break the menu rule — the fact that people go deaf when they read.

Only the most gifted presenter (and there are only a few) can pull-off a great presentation when the rules of articulate message delivery are ignored. And we have just scratched the surface.

We did not cover such things as the proper use of text, voice control, presenter visibility, sound track accompaniment, room lighting, and table/chair arrangement. Each is important. Most important is to end mindless adherence to inarticulate communication practices. Doing away with bullet slides is a good place to start.

Bullet Insanity
September 24, 2012 by Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Version: 6C0542C6(R04) • Feb 13, 2014
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The quantity of poor communication flowing from organizations is shocking. Examples include presentations laced with attention destroying bullet slides, literature overwhelmingly populated with stand alone facts, and trade show booths emulating a department store display window replete with human manikins.

These examples are shocking for two reasons. First, they’re used repeatedly even though they don’t work. Second, they demonstrate a total ignorance of what communication is and how it works.

Communication is what the mind makes out of the messages received through the senses. This activity is unyielding and unconnected to the intention’s of the sender. In fact, sender intention’s almost always lack the compulsory ingredient of effective communication — appeal to emotion.

Emotion is potential behavior that exists in the mind. Emotion is evoked by some of the messages that come through the senses. Messages that evoke emotions are communication. Messages that do not evoke emotions are noise. This process occurs inside the mind and is not, in any way, respectful of sender intention(s). Here are some examples…

When driving while talking with a companion, it’s your emotional self that continuously monitors the traffic around you, and signals you to stop talking and pay attention when the situation demands deliberate concentration.

You’re probably not aware that you stop talking when exercising intense concentration. In all probability your companion, experiencing the same emotion as you, will also stop talking. Steering clear of an automobile accident is as much about emotion as it is about turning a wheel and stepping on a pedal.

Think back to the last “car wreck” of a presentation you attended. The chances are many to one that the presentation was laden with bullet slides. What is your first response to such a presentation? Do you serenely get on with the business of reading and evaluating each bullet, or are you overcome with remembrances of the many less than enthusiastic moments spent while a presenter plodded one by one through a seemingly never ending list of bullets?

Even if you suppressed your initial feeling of dismay, and began reading each bullet, another feeling will soon take hold. Namely the feeling of frustration as the presenter begins discussing the bullet you read moments before. Your frustration is naturally directed at the presenter whose conduct indicates either indifference to, or ignorance of, the fact that audience members read considerably faster than presenters speak.

The relevant, and sad, point to be made here is that truly great bullet slide material is incapable of changing the negative feelings inherent to a bullet slide presentation. That’s because all communication is evaluated by our emotional self before our logical self. This fact is put most succinctly and convincingly by award-winning neuroscientist Antonio Damasio

“The human mind is not a thinking machine, it is a feeling machine that thinks.”

Assume it’s 2:00 AM and foggy. You’re walking alone to your car located at the far end of a dimly lit, almost empty, parking garage. Suddenly you hear an unfamiliar and unexpected noise. What do you do first? Do you serenely decide to survey the environment, looking to collect data for analysis of the situation, or do you get a chill down your spine?

Let’s change the environment from a parking garage to a jungle. You’re walking through a jungle when you become aware of a rustling in the brush beside you. Is that rustling the wind or a predator? What do your emotions tell you to do? If you run, you may be wrong, but you will survive. If you ignore your emotions and decide it’s the wind and you’re wrong, you’re lunch.

Be it jungle or garage your response to an unknown sound is exactly the same, even though each of those environments is vastly different. The reason your response is the same is because of emotion. Emotion initiates and dominates almost all communication.

Why then, with such abundant evidence, do communicators continue to do the wrong thing? Such behavior is reminiscent of Albert Einstein’s famous definition, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Consider the case of sales literature dominated by stand-alone claims and facts. If claims and facts, standing alone, could convince a prospect to buy, the seller would need only to send prospects a list of facts and wait for orders. Everyone knows that doesn’t work, but materials continue to be created and distributed in a like manner.

Almost everyone has heard the saying, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” And yet, trade show literature is replete with phrases like, “The Superior Solution For…” The only response that phrase brings about is a judgement of being the same as all other claimants of “Superior Solutions.” Can there be a worse first impression than the judgement of being the same as others?

Such a judgement is not only a terrible first impression, it’s very likely the last impression ever to be made. Indeed the saying — “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” — is wrong. You’ll never make any kind of impression if the first one doesn’t connect emotionally!

Presentations made for the purpose of recruiting talent usually begin with a “This Is Who We Are” slide. Typically the presentation opens with an illustration of an organization chart and words such as, “XYZ, The Leading Supplier Of…” The obvious intent is to convince recruits they are being presented to by a successful organization. But the claim, “The Leading Supplier Of…,” is devoid of anything that connects emotionally.

Now consider a slide depicting enthusiastic people at work with these words, “Successful Organizations Don’t Have To Recruit Talent, They Attract It.”

That message summons a powerful emotion. First, it’s true. Talent flocks to success. Second, a boisterous message stimulates an emotional response which causes an audience to go into challenge mode. That’s exactly what a talented presenter wants, a well kindled audience, intently listening, and thereby providing the presenter with the ideal opportunity to make his or her case. That sort of presentation environment is many times preferable to one in which the audience is sitting in a coma-like stupor thinking, “Here we go again, another ‘Leading Supplier Of’ company.”

There has to be a reason or two as to why flawed communication practices continue. In the simplest case, it is a forlorn admission of not knowing what else to do. That’s regrettable, but honest.

Less honest, but with a very strong emotional appeal, is the “safety in numbers” scheme. The “safety in numbers” scheme is an attempt to hedge against failure’s comeuppance. The idea is that enactment of historically successful procedures will, first and foremost, provide cover if the future does not work out as the past suggests. Demographic and psychographic research, case studies, and “big data” analysis all provide this type of cover.

But the very alluring feeling of security provided by a “safety in numbers” scheme is wholly different from success. The fact that a large number of organizations recruit by way of “Leading Supplier Of” claims, and the fact that a large number of presenters use bullet slides, means only that a large number of recruitment programs, and a large number of presenters fail. Is there any real safety in numbers when the numbers represent failure?

The truth is that historical procedures are no more a guarantor of future success then is historical failure prevention against future failure. To say it directly, it’s not what happens in history that creates success, it what happens inside the mind.

The only thing focus groups, case studies, or “big data” research can do is summarize what came before. They cannot foretell what is possible in the future. Future possibilities can only be revealed by understanding the human mind as defined in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and biology.

“The human mind is not a thinking machine, it is a feeling machine that thinks.” The application of Antonio Damasio’s pronouncement is universal and obviously applies to more than the examples of communication insanity this brief article provides. It applies wherever and whenever it is desired to have an individual, group, or populace choose a desired action.

There is no mystery involved in creating successful products, making sales, getting votes, raising funds, or motivating a specific intended action within another. The mystery is why so many continue to believe that success can result by employing insane communication practices.

Communication Insanity
September 10, 2012 by Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Version: D5EABFB2(R06) • Feb 15, 2014
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“You may not know exactly what your customer is thinking, but you can know how he or she thinks.” In terms of persuasive communication, this Manna Groups aphorism means that you must understand how the mind makes meaning out of the information that comes through the senses. A good way to start is to acknowledge the difference between delivering facts and creating impact.

Delivering facts is the practice of putting information in front of customers or prospects with the hope that such information will motivate a desired action. A trade show booth outfitted with a video and a stack of brochures is an example of this kind of thing.

So too are the many delivery metrics represented under such names as Frequency, Reach, Cost Per Thousand (CPM), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Gross Impressions, Net Unduplicated Audience, Cost Per Inquiry (CPI), and others.

These metrics are like a UPS rate sheet in that they quantify delivery cost. What these metrics cannot quantify is delivery value.

Let us be clear, delivering facts is exactly as valuable as delivering an empty box. It doesn’t matter how much it costs to deliver an empty box and it doesn’t matter how timely or articulately the delivery is made. An empty box is an empty box — period!

Fact based communication is more than un-valuable, it’s arrogant. It assumes a customer or prospect can accept that what he or she already believes to be true is false, or at least suspect. No customer or prospect willingly enters into an inquiry about a product, service, candidate, or cause that way.

Even if it were possible to identify the rare individual capable of suspending existing beliefs, the re-evaluation time assumed by fact based communication no longer exists.

Today’s marketplace of abundance is deluged with replicated products, each of which erodes the time, and most especially the equanimity, required to re-evaluate currently held beliefs.

The only effective alternative to presenting facts is to create impact. It’s a hard thing to do, much harder than presenting facts. In truth creating impact is often harder to accomplish than it is to create or develop a product, service, candidate, or cause.

This is an important realization. A product, service, candidate, or cause has very little chance of success if the amount of time, talent, and money devoted to creating impact does not at least equal the amount of time, talent, and money devoted to creating the product, service, candidate, or cause. That’s tough news, but it’s the truth!

So how is it done? How does one create impact and in so doing persuade others to take a desired action? Start by accepting that impact and articulation are different.

Articulation means mastery of the technical skills required for clear communication. Impact is the talent to persuade others to take a desired action.

Impact occurs when the mind links messages that come through the senses to existing convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs. This has nothing at all to do with fact(s).

Convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs are the alphabet with which impactful communication is created. An impactful communicator knows which convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs— which letters of the alphabet — exist within an intended audience. His or her task is to link to, and link together, existing convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs in a way that “spells out” an intended action.

An impactful communicator is really only interested in addressing two questions. First, will the message being articulated link to, and link together, existing convictions, emotions, feelings, and beliefs within the intended recipient? Second, will the link(s) effect a desired outcome?

These questions exist specifically to measure what happens after message delivery. They are scarcely, if ever, connected to the cost of message delivery.

Impact requires understanding and parlaying with how the mind makes meaning from the messages received through the senses. Until this ability is mastered, an articulate conveyor of fact will accomplish little more than that of a delivery clerk dispatching empty boxes.

Impact
April 1, 2012 by Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Version: 005A06D5(R05) • Feb 2, 2014
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In 1878 author Margaret Wolfe Hungerford gave life to the now familiar idiom, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” In the nearly 135 years since, the assignment of beauty, of merit, of import, etc., remain as perceptions derived on an individual beholder basis. Thank goodness, because persuasion wouldn’t be possible if it were any other way.

Perception makes persuasion possible. And every act of perception requires individual judgment; an individual opinion on the state of affairs in the world. Every act of perception requires active interpretation by individual beholders. If it were otherwise, if perceptions were the same from beholder to beholder, there would be no need for (and no) persuasion. There would only be statements of fact.

But every successful communicator will tell you that facts, standing alone, are incapable of achieving the superior results derived from a strongly felt perception. That’s why we say, a customer is incapable of thinking about a product until he or she has been guided to have a strong feeling about it.

The key to shaping perception, to causing a customer to feel deeply about a product, service, candidate, or cause is to create a message that stimulates the mind passionately. This condition cannot be achieved by a mere recitation of facts.

At Manna Groups we call this talent Sculpture — the ability to create messages that deeply resonate with the convictions already within the beholder. These messages represent the root of persuasion. At their best they connect a beholder to a product by way of a basic and invariable belief. (…)

Consider the following true story…

The last of the invited guests were passing through the rear doors of the conference area as the facilities’ maintenance man approached the evening’s presenter and said, “That was really amazing what you showed those people tonight. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Was this a magic show or something?”

The “magic show” the maintenance man was referring to consisted of three pieces of equipment: a teletype machine, a telephone, and an acoustic coupler (the original modem). It was March 1965 and the presenter had used this equipment to demonstrate the latest in on-line keyboard remote access.
The demonstration consisted of typing in a birthdate volunteered by someone in the audience, pressing the teletype send key, and waiting for the teletype to “come alive” and type the day of the week on which the date fell. The process had been repeated several times and for each repetition the answer was found to be correct.

The maintenance man asked, “Can you do that for my birthday?”

“Sure” was the response from the evening’s presenter, and one more time the demonstration was successfully conducted. To the system analysts and programmers in the audience that evening’s demonstration was a clear and simple (albeit, rather prosaic) version of what the world now accepts as ordinary on-line processing.

But to the maintenance man it was something altogether different. As expressed in his own words: “Man, you’ve invented a birthday machine!”

(This story related to Bob Manna in 1965 by Dr. Dan Scott, a pioneer in remote keyboard access.)

There has never been a clearer or more precise exemplification of, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What the maintenance man told the presenter decades ago, is that perception is determined upon what customers already believe to be true.

Put succinctly, the truth about “truth” in communication is that there is none. In the same sense as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so to is the truth about a product, service, candidate, or cause.

Consider the following…

In 2005, corporations spent more than $7.3 billion on market research in the United States alone. In 2007, that figure rose to $12 billion. And that doesn’t even include the additional expenses involved in marketing an actual product – the packaging and the displays, TV commercials, online banner ads, celebrity endorsements, and billboards – which carry a $117 billion annual price tag in America alone. But if these strategies still work, then why do eight out of ten new product launches fail within the first three months?

(From the New York Times Bestseller, Buyology, written by Martin Lindström)

The reason 80% of new product offerings fail is because the messages wrapped around the products do not persuaded anyone to give them a try! Until a product is put into use, the truth about failure has nothing to do with what the product does, as a scientist, engineer, or ineffective communicator might think about it.

Until a product is bought and put to use, the only thing that matters is what meaning the customer’s mind makes out of the communication that surrounds the product. How can it be otherwise?

The purpose of communication is not to introduce the customer to new truths. From the point of view of the customer there is no truth other than that which he or she already knows. (…)

Communication’s purpose is to produce positive, deeply felt, perceptions. This is done by re-arranging the truths that are already present in the minds of customers and prospects.

Happy Birthday, birthday machine. It’s been forty-seven years since you reminded us that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder!

The Invention Of The Birthday Machine
March 1, 2012 by Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Version: 004C95FA(R03) • Feb 12, 2014
Photo by AlisonW, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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It’s hard to imagine someone saying to another, “You know I bought this product because of the extraordinary communication that preceded my purchase.” Yet, that is exactly why products are purchased.

Every purchase is motivated by the communication that precedes it. The communication comes first. The purchase comes second. And what is true for products is equally true for votes, verdicts, and volitions. Every human undertaking is primarily motivated by communication.

Before reading past this sentence take a moment and reread the first paragraph of this article.

Now consider this familiar proverb, “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” Can there be any doubt in your mind that the words “good first impression” denote communication? The practical upshot of this realization forms the basis of two important New Year’s resolutions.

Be it resolved in 2012 that first impressions are the sole result of communication. Be it further resolved that facts do not correlate with positive first impressions.

Suppose you have control of a new product that is, in every way, better than other products currently in existence. Your product is well tested. You have satisfied manufacturing and distribution requirements, and assembled a talented sales team. The only thing left to do is take the product to market. Which means what exactly?

You might be tempted to reply that the question is superfluous. Taking a product to market means making the product’s facts known to prospective customers.

Good luck with that! Customers don’t pay attention to facts. Customers (people) pay attention to convictions. Customers use their convictions to filter and cast aside communication that does not strengthen existing feelings. When it comes to impressions and feelings, convictions, not facts, are in charge.

The power of convictions can be quickly demonstrated via the used car salesman test. There is nothing a used car salesman can say that will make you think he is telling the truth. Why? Because you are incapable of thinking beyond what your convictions make you feel about a used car salesman.

A truly sad thing to recognize is that even if a used car salesman is telling the truth, you will not believe what he is saying. A used car salesman is a used car salesman. End of story!

The phenomenon of using convictions as the basis for forming impressions is technically known as perceptual and cognitive mechanics. What the phenomenon means is that people feel deeply, before thinking clearly. A customer will form a positive impression only if he or she is exposed to communication that parlays with his or her existing convictions.

Imagine that part of your “take to market” strategy is to send a blast Email to those who are likely to be interested in your product. Do you suppose there is any list of facts you can include in the Email that will create a positive first impression? The chances are many to one that the Email will never even be opened let alone evaluated.

Email, you see, is an electronic equivalent to a used car salesman. Their form speaks louder than their message.

It is most revealing when a client asks us why we chose a particular medium over another, or why we decided to create a message that did not extol a products technical merit. The question assumes we were in control of how such a communication would be received by those for whom it was intended.

Everyone who is seriously committed to achieving success must accept that product merit comes second to meritorious communications. If it were the other way round, every meritorious product would become successful.

The year 2012, and those that follow, will be better served when we resolve to understand that facts are not the same as convictions, and they are miles from truth as it is understood by the mind and heart.

Persuasive Resolutions
January 1, 2012 by Bob Manna & Matt Manna
Version: 004D9326(R09) • May 18, 2016
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