As Sting once sang in a vintage Police song, “I hope that someone gets my message…”
That’s from the band’s 1979 hit, “Message in a Bottle.”
Anytime a communication is shared, we always hope someone gets it (whether it’s in a bottle or not).
You may send one email to your entire list. Some will love it, while others ignore it.
And some come away with a completely different takeaway than the one you intended.
Same words. Same offer. Different reactions.
In an upcoming lecture, my Media and You class at East Tennessee State University will learn about the factors researchers have found that influence how an audience responds to a message.
There are specific traits that explain why an identical message lands differently from person to person.
Today, we’ll tackle the thinking traits. Part 2 covers the emotional ones.
This is good to keep in mind as you’re thinking through how you can make your communications more attention-getting, engaging, and persuasive.
The Four Thinking Traits
There are cognitive traits that affect how someone thinks through information:
- Field independency – The ability to separate signal from noise in a message. Field-independent people sort quickly to what matters. Whereas field-dependent people get stuck in the chaos, retain less, and are more likely to feel overwhelmed by a message that isn’t tightly organized. If you’re not a polished copywriter/editor, you’d be well served to hire one.
- Crystalline intelligence – The ability to memorize and organize facts, which produces vertical thinking. That’s systematic, step-by-step problem-solving that’s excellent for traditional problems with learnable solutions. But it hits a wall when the familiar, proven approach stops working and there’s no new route to try. Think of the employee who’s mastered your customer service process and follows it perfectly. That’s great… until a customer’s problem doesn’t fit the process.
- Fluid intelligence – The ability to make creative leaps and see something in a fresh way, which produces lateral thinking. That means taking different angles on a problem and working around dead ends rather than hitting them. Inventors and entrepreneurs skew lateral. Be mindful of being flighty and throwing out ideas that aren’t always feasible.
- Conceptual differentiation – How finely someone categorizes new information. People with many narrow categories (high differentiation) slice messages thin. People with a few broad categories (low differentiation) lump everything from a niche together. They do it either by looking for similarities to what’s already stored (a leveling strategy) or by emphasizing what’s different (a sharpening strategy).
What’s Your Messaging Strategy?
You can’t survey every customer’s thinking style before you hit send. But you can write knowing your audience includes all four types of thinkers, from the quick sorter to the easily overwhelmed.
A message built for someone who sorts signal from noise quickly, thinks step-by-step, and already has a mental category for your topic will land completely differently on someone who doesn’t. Picture a customer who gets overwhelmed easily and is meeting your business’s message for the first time.
That’s why “simplify the message” is more than a cliché. It compensates for a well-documented bottleneck in a chunk of any real audience.
Here’s a quick three-point checklist to use before you send your next communication:
- Is the message tightly organized so a field-dependent reader isn’t left sifting through clutter?
- Could someone with a broad, low-differentiation view of your category still tell what makes you different?
- Does it work for the reader who isn’t already inside your world?
If the answer to any of those is no, tighten it.
3 Big Takeaways
- Four cognitive traits (field independency, crystalline intelligence, fluid intelligence and conceptual differentiation) explain why the same message gets processed differently by different people.
- Some people sort signal from noise quickly, and others get overwhelmed by a message that isn’t tightly organized. Your audience includes both.
- “Simplify the message” isn’t generic advice. It can increase the engagement rate with your audience.
Do you have messages built only for the customer who already gets you? Ready to update your communications, or do you need help? Do share!
Stay authentic — and keep hoping that someone “gets” your message…
Jeffery E. Pizzino, APR (seen here in a vintage photo circa 1983 serendipitously doing a Clash impersonation in a since-forgotten location) is a spin-free public relations pro who is passionate about telling the why of your story with clarity, impact and authenticity. He began his PR career in 1987 at Ketchum Public Relations in New York City but has spent the majority of his career as a solopreneur. He’s the Chief Authentic Officer of the Johnson City, TN-based public relations firm, AuthenticityPR. He also functions as the fractional CCO for his clients.
Jeff has an MBA in Management from Western International University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications — with an emphasis in PR — from Brigham Young University (rise and shout!). He’s also accredited in public relations (APR) and an adjunct media and communication faculty at East Tennessee State University. This Milwaukee, Wisconsin native holds an Italian citizenship and plans to live and work there someday. Jeff and his storyteller wife Leticia have four children and five grandchildren. In his extremely limited nonwork hours, he studies Italiano, practices guitar, writes songs, gardens, works out, plays pickleball, disc golfs, reads, listens to New Wave music, serves as an assistant communication director in his church, watches BYU football, watches the original Mission Impossible TV series, and plays board games (mostly Dominion and Seven Wonders). No, this guy’s never bored and looking for something to do. Email Jeff.
