Grim statistics: reading and the English-speaking world
It’s a 50-car pile up – life gone horribly wrong. Reams of evidence proves:
- a lot people don’t like reading
- most “don’t have time”
- others would always rather do something else
- TV usually takes precedence
- your web copy and marketing collateral better be pretty damn snappy
Yes, statistics can be skewed and stretched to prove just about anything. Agreed? Yet, exact math and strict numbers aside, I’ve seen nothing in my last half hour of research to suggest the opposite. Oh dear.
…on with the evidence:
The States:
50 percent of American adults are unable to read an eighth grade level book.
Jonathan Kozol, Illiterate America
One third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 million American adults can’t read at all.
National Right to Read Foundation
One in four adults read no books at all in [2006].
The Associated Press, August 21, 2007
Britain
British children aged 11 to 15 now spend 55% of their waking lives in front of televisions and computers.
Canada
Nearly a third of adults (31 per cent) across the country didn’t read a single book for pleasure in all of 2007.
CanWest News Service, January 2, 2008
Well, that explains an awful lot.
So what do we do? Cater to the lowest common denominator or stand up straight and write for real live grown ups? I’m sad to say it depends on your brand – but more than once have I been asked to strike “the big words”.
In other news —
Sarah Palin’s getting a book deal, which means Wasilla is getting a bookstore.
The Colbert Report, November 19, 2008
Fun facts
Who reads the most? Indians.
Who’s got the highest literacy rate? Cuba.
Do you buck the trend?
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The Cold War in your printer (& what you need to do about it)
(Flickr:
Fresh from the bowels of Wikipedia – Ronald Reagan has yet another bizarre credit to his name, proving presidency wasn’t his life’s biggest surprise turn. Go figure.
He’s the reason North Americans load their printers with the stubby stuff, 8.5″ X 11″, while the leaner global population sticks to A4.
Yes, really! The man, the legend, the letter sized paper.
So do a quick recce of your PDFs. Treachery lurks!
Do you send PDF literature between North America & the rest of the world?
Send your recipient a PDF paper type formatted to their printer. They probably won’t notice that you made the effort, which is even better. The annoying margin errors are what they’d find irritating. So ensure you’ve got 2 versions of each: one for the world and one for Reagan’s memory.
As for his extracurricular decrees – the answer to your “wtf” is ably summed up here.
Michael explains:
With the dawn of the computer age and proliferation of photocopiers, the government standard to that date was set by Herbert Hoover in the 1920’s. The standard had been 8″ x 10.5″, which is still used in notebooks today. Since copiers weren’t made to handle that size paper, the decision arrived at Reagan’s desk.
And, quoting wholly out of context – here’s your answer:
“They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.”
Ronald Reagan
What’s better than the last day of school?
Flickr: SuperFantastic
5-4-3-2-1. Bell rings. Books forgotten. You’re free. FREEEEE!!!! It was the best day of your life.
Fact. It’s summer and people want to be outside.
They’d rather be on a boat, up a mountain, under a sprinkler – anywhere but in an office. Help their daydreams and enable their escape.
We’re talking content – lots of it – and goodies, too.
Whether you market to the public or to other businesses, take action this month to help your clients out. I’ll use travel as an example here but, whether you’re in the travel trade or not – eliminate your clients’ need to research. Do it all for them so they can stay longer at the pool. Pile on the helpful, the content, the PDFs, the pre-arrival guides – and put them on a silver plate.
What info can you provide now that your customers will love?
Start with this rule: summer means you can have more fun.
What if you were the business to provide an anti-whining kit for family travel sanity? Make a PDF activity kit specific to your destination. Parents everywhere will love you.
What if you were the service that took all the guess-work out of landing in a new city?
- Heathrow for first-timers?
- Your first day in Toronto: What you’ll need
- (Blah blah blah extrapolate as it applies to your business)
I don’t mean take on Lonely Planet, I mean that people will spend hours online this summer anyway (while stuck inside wishing that they weren’t). They’re dreaming of their vacation in your destination, learning how to have more fun and probably how to save more money.
Go ahead, be that guy.
Be the business that does better than the chronically disappointing rack of brochures that suck.
Hand out something better to guests or (please-oh-please), email it to them when they make their booking. It’s free.
Here’s where I get all genius and excited. Involve your staff. Poll them.
- ‘Our staff’s top 25 packing tips for a perfect San Diego holiday’
- ‘The 10 places in Seattle we think you should watch the sunset’
Excitement level: 100
If we’re really talking knock-your-socks-off good, create a series of emails to send to guests as their arrival date approaches.
Even if your working life exists in a more corporate, sensible sphere – out of town visitors and colleagues from distant offices will always appreciate similar strokes.
All summer, your customers will rest easy. They’re in good hands. They’ve got great material to read at work, edging them a few minutes closer to their perfect holiday.
So take a moment from Tweeting and dream up a few downloads.
Remember, there’s sucking up…and then there’s just plain awesome.
I wrote this for my May newsletter – going out to the hot little hands of important people everywhere.
Want the June edition for yourself? Sign up now – you don’t even have to say please!
Bryson on brochures that suck
Flickr: way opening
Are you in the habit of researching good vs. bad brochures? There’s dangerous room for error. The tacky pamphlet is out and, according to Bill Bryson’s words of 14 years ago – it’s been out.
“[I] eventually ended up at the tourist office, feeling mildly lost and far from home. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing here. I looked through rack of leaflets for shire horse centres, petting zoos, falconry centres, miniature pony centres, model railways, butterfly farms, and something called – I jest not, I regret to say – Twiggy Winkie’s Farm and Hedgehog Hospital, none of which seemed to address my leisure requirements.
Nearly all the leaflets were depressingly illiterate, particularly with regard to punctuation – I sometimes think that if I see one more tourist leaflet that says “Englands Best” or “Britains Largest,” I will go and torch the place – and they all seemed so pathetically modest in what they had to offer.
Nearly all of them padded out their lists of featured attractions with things like “Free Car Park,” “Gift Shop and Tearoom,” and the inevitable “Adventure Playground” (and then were witless enough to show you in the photograph that it was just a climbing frame and a couple of plastic animals on springs). Who goes to these places? I couldn’t say, I’m sure”.
Bill Bryson, Notes From A Small Island, Doubleday 1995
We’re all going on a summer holiday? No thanks.
Read a few sleuthing tips on how to unearth your better brochure.
(And don’t forget to send me your illiterate bingo victories as they occur).
The brochure’s back: tips & tricks for your best brochure
Today’s installment is quick, painless and bullet-pointed. Exactly what you need on a Monday morning.
Just get-’er-done, I say.
Tips
You can get your marketing jargon elsewhere: AIDA, calls to action, target audience, etc. You know all of that (Google it if you don’t).
Here are a few of my very own tips for creating brilliant brochures:
- These days, people are sensitive about wasting paper – could you move to a 1-page spec sheet? What about using only PDF e-brochures?
- Try to strike a balance between an impressive layout and providing useful info.
- Omit dates or sensitive info if printing in bulk – once out of date, you’re out of pocket.
- 1 great photo is better than 4 tiny thumbnails.
- Your company name is not a benefit – use your biggest headline to your best advantage.
- Check all your bullet point sentences start with the same case – upper or lower, not a mixture.
Tricks
A bit of homework’s coming your way. Research cap at the ready? As you consider either making or tweaking your company’s brochure, start a collection.
- While browsing the web, download every brochure you come across and stick them in a desktop folder.
- While oot and aboot (yes, Canadian accent in full swing), grab every pamphlet and brochure you see.
When you’ve got a nice fat stack, lay them out across your desk or kitchen table. Examine them as you fill 2 lists:
“Oh my god, what were they thinking, that’s so painfully awful.”
“Nicely done. I had never thought of that.”
Look at these things in particular:
- the text layout and spacing
- how headers are formatted
- the tone of voice – boring or worth reading?
- can you scan it?
- are the photos any good?
- what’s the paper quality or file size?
You’ll notice details and little horrors that had been hiding, before you’re a Brochure Guru. Let me know if you need help with the content. Remember, copywriting is using spicy little words to get exactly what you want.
MailChimp email marketing: glowing review
Yesterday my email newsletter software asked me if I Jazzercised. I laughed out loud.
Computers can get boring. It’s easy to tire of work websites, whether or not you spend your life online. So let’s have some fun with it. Let’s reference ’80s power ballads and dated forms of cardio at every click. On this, MailChimp and I agree.
Do you use MailChimp for your email marketing? You should. Here’s why.
Free?
If your list has fewer than 100 subscribers, it’s free. Free! You get 600 free email credits per month. Let new or small business owners dance in the street – freeeeee! Once your email list grows above 100, reasonable pay-as-you-go plans are available. By then, you and the MailChimp monkey* will be old friends. Makes you all warm and squooshy inside.
* technically chimps are apes, but they call him a monkey. I’m all for alliteration over science.
Templates?
MailChimp comes with a handful of layouts for your email blasts and stock photography galore. If you happen to have a web design guru hidden in your back cupboard, he or she can build a flashy custom layout. The rest of us can either design headers within the programme or upload our own in a flash of “here’s-something-I-made-earlier” glory.
Branding?
Play the matching game: make the entire process (sign up screens, confirmation emails and newsletters) look exactly like your website – no technical prowess required. It’s just like a paint-by-number kit.
Different lists?
Keep different lists for newsletter subscribers, clients, past clients…your Christmas card list…
Schedule send-out?
Whether your copywriter submits your final newsletter copy ahead of schedule (mais, bien sûr) or you’re a very organised sort, you can schedule your newsletter’s send date and time – and forget about it.
Tracking?
Get your stalker on and easily learn how many people open your newsletters, how many forward or click through to your website.
Standards?
Afraid of inadvertantly spamming someone? Good luck. The system is wholly compliant with every U.S. spam safeguard:
- Users who subscribe must first confirm by email.
- Every email sent must include your name and address.
- Addresses inputted manually require your guarantee: “Yes, I have their permission”.
- The subscriber’s IP address and time of subscription is logged, in case future proof is ever needed.
After spending an enjoyable half hour in the company of the MailChimp primate, you’ll surface for a well-earned break and he’ll ask something very dashing and complimentary:
“Have you been working out?”
“You’re good at this! Have you done this before?”
*Blush* True love blooms.
12 signals that your print marketing arsenal needs some love
1. All marketing materials look different - different fonts, sizes, colours…
2. Paragraphs are used in favour of tables or bulleted lists
3. Any piece uses (in order of awfulness):
- grainy photos
- bad scans
- clip art
- horror of all horrors- Microsoft Word Art
4. When requested, it takes more than 2 seconds to email an info packet by response.
5. It’s been years since a professional got their hands on your goodies. (Your marketing goodies, that is).
6. You find yourself answering the same 10 questions by phone all day, every day.
7. Your info pack or website takes 10 pages to say what you could in just 1.
8. A total overhaul is in order – and you haven’t the time to do it justice.
9. Copying and pasting sums up your computer expertise – and design software is not a worthwhile expense.
10. You’d never consider hiring a marketing or design firm
- too expensive
- too trendy
- too much jargon
11. You would use any of the following words to describe your brochure or website
- quaint
- homey
- charming
12. And, most importantly, if they haven’t been touched since Bush was in office. Times are changing; celebrate and treat yourself!