I’ve read a bunch of books on marketing, attended conferences on marketing, and made a study of marketing every week in my practice. In all this time, nobody has taught me more significantly about the subject than my pre-literate 2-year-old.
As an aside to this, I apologize to everyone, including my wife, with whom I’ve used more words than required to make my point. Or maybe I should have just listened instead. And I concur with Mark Twain when he too apologized for writing such a long letter because he didn’t have time to write a short one.
Years ago, while driving down main street with my then 2-year-old, he’d identify all sorts of establishments for us, like Horton’s or Tire or Bucks. He couldn’t read, but he could most certainly associate shapes and colours. And he could do this because he’d seen it before, the same way, every time, in every place.
Why do we understand this in the classroom but not on the front of our building? Or on our website? Or on that poster, that shirt, that business card, that memo, that form or that speech?
If we’ve got something worth communicating, then do it clearly, simply and consistently. To a fault.
My 2-year-old taught me this.
By Jeff Sotropa,
Principal, Sotropa Communications
