There’s a famous piece of Hollywood folklore – usually attributed to the director Ernst Lubitsch – that goes something like this…
Lubitsch told his screenwriter that the beginning of a film needed to establish three things about its male lead: he’d been married a long time, he’d grown tired of his wife, and he’d developed a roving eye.
The writer came back with four pages of exposition. Lubitsch read them.
“You don’t need all that. Just put down this – the man walks into the elevator with his wife and keeps his hat on. On the seventh floor a pretty blonde walks in, and the man takes his hat off.”
It might seem an unlikely place for a lesson in marketing communications to come from. But Lubitsch was doing something brand storytellers and copywriters have to do all the time: making a lot of meaning fit into a small space.
Compress, don’t just cut
When someone asks for shorter copy, the obvious response is to start deleting. Lose a sentence here. Trim an adjective there. Eventually the word count comes down. But sometimes you’ve cut the true meaning too.
Compression is different. The aim is to find the detail that can carry several ideas at once. Lubitsch’s hat tells us the state of the marriage without a word of explanation.
Back in the land of key messages, compare:
“We’re committed to providing a level of customer support that’s fast, attentive and available around the clock.”
With: “Need us at 3am? We’ll pick up.”
Tell the fact. Let it show the meaning.
Show, don’t tell’ is one of those brand writing rules that survives because it’s broadly right – concrete things tend to land better than abstract claims.
But brand communications still have facts to communicate. Sometimes the audience just needs to be told something, simply.
If your company developed the first recyclable paint tin, say so. But what probably doesn’t need to follow is a sentence explaining that this demonstrates a long history of innovation and technical expertise. The fact has already done that work.
Know when to stop
This is the other half of compression, and often the scarier one: trusting the reader to get it.
All too often, brand copy continues after the point has landed:
“92% of our customers renew each year. That’s testament to the strong relationships we build.”
If the number is meaningful, the second sentence adds very little. The reader has already made the connection – and the extra words are just using up their attention.
Give people the facts they need. Pick the detail that makes those facts mean something. Then know when you’re done.
One hat really can do the work of hundreds of words.
In fact, it’s an approach we’ve recently been putting to work for Farrow & Ball, Small Luxury Hotels of the World and Walker Morris.
Got an important message buried in too many words? We can help you find the hat. Get in touch to talk. How to tell a compelling story in fewer words.