Messaging

You know, I think we’ve gone too far on this messaging thing. Not messaging as in sending each other messages. That’s fine. The more messages, the better. Messaging as in, How do I make an idea palatable to idiots.

Obviously messaging works. If you have an idea you need to get into people’s heads, you should think about messaging. People are busy. They pay no attention. When people hear an idea, they take one piece of it way out of context and form an opinion based on that, then refuse to change it until the end of time. You have more success if you tailor your message to be charming and digestible.

That’s fine. But I feel like we’ve begun to demand good messaging for everything, even when we’re not idiots. Now we think: If your messaging isn’t great, I’m out already. I’m not even going to entertain your idea, because your messaging sucks. It might be a good idea, but you couldn’t even get your messaging right, so forget it.

Maybe it’s a natural reaction to being bombarded by marketing all the time. Every day, sounds and and colors and movements try to catch our attention, most of which we manage to fend off. It’s wearying, so maybe it’s a relief to encounter some messy, confusing messaging that allows you to dismiss it right away, with no further brain-power required.

But this means abdicating responsibility to the messengers. It allows messaging, rather than the thing being messaged, to determine what we think about it. I don’t love the situation where we’re all so busy and distracted that there could be a, oh, I don’t know, a global pandemic and a free vaccine, and a valid argument against taking it would be, But the messaging was terrible.