It's palm card season. That time of year when campaigns make their first creative assets to hand out on the road for the next 15 mos. (PS - Many of them don't [[Lucky Strikes Dr.png|age well]].) One such draft crossed our desk this week. The whole team told the printer "looks fine, run the presses!" The spec for the card was 36 square inches. Original draft was 374 words. That's ten words per square inch. Here's 10 words/ sq. inch in Times New Roman 10 pt font on a frame that's 4"x 9". ![[Vertical 10 wpsin Red.png]] Might as well keep the Latin. #### We see this *all the time*. Operatives often forget: we aren't running against a primary opponent. Or the Democratic incumbent. Or whomever happens to be Speaker or President that cycle. We're running against Target and Best Buy and Apple. And cat videos. All in competition for attention. **Go find direct marketing material from a Fortune 500 that has more than 2-4 words per square inch.** We'll wait. Your audience won't. [[Voters don't read]]. Their brains are rotted by TikTok. Or Facebook. Or cable TV. Or more likely, all three at once. ##### Make it simple, or make it useless. And that's not just about [[On Pith|brevity]]. Consumers don't read either. Want proof? Look for a great flat ad from a major brand, almost anything contemporary. Billboard or Instagram; doesn't really matter. What's the upper word limit on the visual space per square inch? 12? 9? ![[Nike Days of the Week 1.png|400]] ![[shot on iphone.png|400]] **Or here's Chipotle, getting Meta on our point:** ![[Chipotle Billboard.png]] ***It's not that 10 words per square inch is too many words. It's that, by definition, it's too many ideas.*** That is, about the number of ideas a person can consume while you have their attention before they have to do the smallest modicum of intellectual work at understanding your point. It's our job to do that work, so they don't have to. They're like bad union labor. ##### Here's an aging but famous example of doing the work for the viewer well; in moving political pictures. . Many of you remember the spot. Ten years ago now; and the guy lost. That means it was good. *Key point: it's not just the Forrest Gump gag that makes the spot work.* Yes, the setup is great. But it works for other reasons. 1. There's one idea. Kander *only* talks about guns. The copywriters could tuck a forced line in about foreign policy; or how bipartisan he was in the legislature, or how nice a guy his wife and mom think he is. But that's all gonna make it worse. 2. There's one image. Maybe he could assemble the rifle in 15 seconds. The producers could have used the back half to cut to a montage of images from Kander's time in Afghanistan. Which is to say; ruin the visual effect. 3. There's one short script. The script is 78 words long. 114 syllables - which is the more salient count. (We'd have trimmed the spot a bit, were it ours.) According to the National Center for Voice and Speech, the average conversation rate for English speakers in the United States is about 150 words per minute. Which is 75 words in the length of an ad. So if a copywriter tries to put more than that in your ad, you should fire them and hire us.