After I presented a Make Your Copy More Creative workshop recently, an attendee pulled me aside. “The speeches I write are just 20 minutes long,” he said. “I can’t afford to make room for anecdotes, metaphors and wordplay.”

I told him he couldn’t afford not to make room for creative elements — that those may well be the only parts of his speech his audience listened to.

That conversation reminded me of an old joke among professional speakers:

“When should you use humor in a speech?” a young speaker asks an experienced orator.

“Only when you want to get paid,” the veteran answers.

The same thing is true for writers: When should you use creative material in your message?

Only when you want your audience to pay attention.

Attention is Job 1.

Grabbing attention is one of the four key responsibilities of a business communicator. After all, our job description is to get readers to:

• Pay attention to our messages
• Understand them
• Remember them
• Act on them later

And that takes creative story elements.

It’s true. Creative material:

1. Grabs attention.

Meet your Broca’s area — a small part of your brain located in the frontal lobe of your left cerebral hemisphere. It’s your body’s language control center.

You can thank your Broca’s area for helping you sort through the equivalent of 174 newspapers, ads included, that you and everybody else gets bombarded with each day — without having to process every word.

Remember that old Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson?

What we say to dogs: “Okay, Ginger! I’ve had it! You stay out of the garbage! Understand, Ginger? Stay out of the garbage, or else!”

What dogs hear: “Blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah.”

Your Broca’s area is Ginger: not paying much attention to most messages — until something really interesting comes along.

Well-worn phrases like “a rough day” are so familiar they don’t activate your Broca’s area. Plain old ‘splainin’ doesn’t do anything for it either.

But creative techniques like wordplay activate Broca’s area (PDF).

Want to cut through the clutter of competing messages (PDF)? Activate readers’ Broca’s area with wordplay and other creative techniques.

2. Keeps that attention longer.

Here’s a finding that will surprise absolutely nobody: Creative sentences encourage reading more than boring ones, according to 1986 research by Suzanne Hidi and William Baird.

Hidi and Baird studied creative sentences like these:

• Adult wolves carry food home in their stomachs and bring it up again or regurgitate it for the young cubs to eat — the wolf version of canned baby food.
• Thomas Edison became the most famous inventor of all time even though he left school when he was only 6 years old.
• A canary can also bluff by playing dead. A frightened canary may go limp in someone’s hand.

Here, in contrast, is the first sentence in the latest news release listed on BusinessWire right now:

Did you read to the end? Of course not.

And that’s the deal. Creative material keeps attention longer — throughout the passage or the piece and over time. Indeed:

• Ads with metaphors in the headline get read more completely than those with literal headlines, according to an archival study of 854 ads.
• Newspaper articles using the storytelling structure are more likely to pull readers across the jump that those using the inverted pyramid, according to research by the American Society of News Editors.
• A blog post with a creative lead drew 300% more readers and 520% more readingthan one with an abstract lead, according to an A/B test by Groove HQ.

Want people to read more of your message? Keep their attention with creative elements.

3. Makes readers’ brains light up.

Think of description as virtual reality:

• Describe a scent, and your readers’ primary olfactory cortexes light up.
• Describe texture, and you activate their sensory cortexes.
• Describe kicking, and not only do you stimulate their motor cortexes, but you stimulate the specific part of the motor cortex responsible for leg action.

“Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters,” reports Annie Murphy Paul in “Your Brain on Fiction” for The New York Times. “Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life.”

Paul reports on new studies that show how description, metaphor and storytelling can make readers smell scents, feel textures, experience action — even understand others better.

But write abstractly — aka, the way we usually do in business communications — and readers’ brains remain dark.

Want to stimulate some brain activity around, say, your CEO’s latest strategy or that brilliant Whatzit you’ll be releasing later this month?

Creative material is the answer.

4. Makes people read more carefully.

A hand shoots up in my Art of the Storyteller workshop, where we’ve been talking about wordplay.

“But,” the communicator says, “don’t you risk confusing people with wordplay?”

Well, yes, I said. Yes, you do. And that’s part of the point.

When readers encounter wordplay, they first try on the literal meaning of the words. When that doesn’t work, they seek alternative meanings.

Same thing happens with metaphor.

Because readers spend extra time processing wordplay (PDF) and metaphor, they pay closer attention to your message, understand it more fully and remember it longer.

Some of the power of metaphor and wordplay, researchers believe, comes from readers’ delight in figuring out the right answer.

Call it the pleasure of the text. That pleasure may cause them to slow down and savor your message.

5. Gets readers to linger over your message.

Readers in one study read 479 words a minute on average. But they read only 394 words a minute — 18% more carefully — when reading the passages they most enjoyed.

“My purpose is to make what I write entertaining enough to compete with beer.”

Anonymous

In other words, they savored the copy, reading almost 18 percent more slowly. Call it ludic reading — from the Latin ludo, or “I play.”

Pleasure reading is a form of play, writes researcher Victor Nell, author of Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure. He studied 245 subjects during six years to learn how people respond to writing they enjoy.

While he can’t say for sure why people read the passages they enjoy most more slowly, he thinks it’s because they move from skimming to savoring.

Researchers estimate that people can read as fast as 600 to 800 words a minute while still understanding each thought fully. (That’s known as “rauding” among reading experts.)

Often, though, people “bolt” the text, or just skim for an overview.

But when they come upon passages they enjoy, readers stop bolting and start paying closer attention to the copy.

So when should you use creative material? Only when you want your audience members to savor your message.

Are you using creative elements to draw attention to your message? Or are you trying to light up readers’ brains with the same old blah-blah-blah?

____

Sources: “Reading Creates ‘Simulations’ In Minds,” NPR, Jan. 31, 2009

Véronique Boulenger, Beata Y. Silber, Alice C. Roy, Yves Paulignan, Marc Jeannerod and Tatjana A. Nazir, “Subliminal display of action words interferes with motor planning: A combined EEG and kinematic study,” Journal of Physiology-Paris, Vol. 102, Issues 1–3, January-May 2008, pp. 130-136

Steven Cherry, “This Is Your Brain on Metaphor,” IEEE Spectrum, April 6, 2012

Michael Chorost, “Your Brain on Metaphors,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 1, 2014

Roger Dooley, “Your Brain on Stories,” Neuromarketing, Jan. 21, 2010

Steve Frandzel, “Metaphors Make Sens(ory Experiences),” The Academic Exchange, Emory University, May 11, 2012

Julio González, Alfonso Barros-Loscertales, Friedemann Pulvermuller, Vanessa Meseguer,  Ana Sanjuán, Vicente Belloch, and Cesar Avila, “Reading ‘cinnamon’ activates olfactory brain regions,” NeuroImage, May 2006

Wray Herbert, “The Narrative in the Neurons,” We’re Only Human, Association for Psychological Science, July 14, 2009

Simon Lacey, Randall Stilla and K. Sathian, “Metaphorically feeling: Comprehending textural metaphors activates somatosensory cortex,” Brain & Language, Vol. 120, Issue 3, March 2012, pp. 416–421

Raymond A. Mar, “The Neural Bases of Social Cognition and Story Comprehension,” Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 3, 2011, pp. 103-134

Victor Nell, “The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure: Needs and Gratifications,” Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Winter 1988), pp. 6-50

Annie Murphy Paul, “Your Brain on Fiction,” The New York Times, March 17, 2012

Pradeep Sopory and James P. Dillard, “The Persuasive Effects of Metaphor: A Meta-Analysis,” Human Communication Research, July 2002

The post Why creative content marketing works appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

My crotchety neighbor likes to quote his favorite philosopher, Anonymous:

“If a man speaks in the forest, and no woman is there to hear him, is he still wrong?”

For communicators, the question is a little different. David Murray, executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association, says:

“If nobody hears your strategic messaging, does it make a sound?”

The biggest risk in communications is not that we might offend someone with creativity or write something that’s eye-rollingly goofy. The biggest risk communicators run is that we never get heard at all.

How do we engage people and get them excited about our content? The key is to make our content more creative.

Whatever type of content you’re creating — from long-form blog posts to teeny tiny social media updates, from content marketing pieces to speeches, from web pages to white papers — you’ll create more successful content when you make it creative.

200 years of research

In the early 19th century, German philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart said that interest leads to understanding, learning and memory — and even inspires readers to learn more.

For nearly 200 years, researchers, philosophers and communicators have seen the link between interest and learning.

One of those researchers is Suzanne Hidi, associate member at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education’s Centre for Applied Cognitive Science. In “Interest and Its Contribution as a Mental Resource for Learning,” she presents a research review on how interest helps people learn.

Interesting copy, according to Hidi’s review of the literature:

• Encourages reading and improves comprehension (Hidi and Baird, 1986)
• Increases understanding (Bernstein, 1955)
• Aids in learning (Hidi and Baird, 1986; Shirey and Reynolds, 1988)
• Helps people remember (Hidi and Baird, 1988)
• Helps readers to come up with fuller, better and more creative responses (Bernstein, 1955)

And that, of course, will dramatically increase your business success.

Why creative content writing? Because creative content:

1. Grabs attention.

Our readers receive the data equivalent of 174 newspapers a day — ads included, according to a study by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.

How do they sort through all of that incoming to select the tiny fraction of pieces they’ll actually read?

They ask what they’ll get out of it versus what they have to put into, according to communication theorist Wilbur Schramm’s Fraction of Selection Model. (Or “expectation of reward divided by effort required,” in Schramm’s words.)

One of the key rewards of reading is entertainment. That’s another reason a high-quality content strategy includes creative content writing.

2. Keeps attention.

Creative material also keeps attention — through the piece and over time.

“Make the important interesting.”

— James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly

That’s one reason the entertaining feature-style story structure outperforms the boring inverted pyramid in study after study.

That means the communicator’s job is to “Make the important interesting,” says James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.

3. Communicates better.

Some concepts you can only explain through creative writing techniques.

“Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.”

— Marshall McLuhan, communication theorist

For instance, former surgeon general C. Everett Koop once compared a sophisticated technique for correcting an undeveloped esophagus to “threading together two wet noodles in the bottom of an ice cream cone with your eyes closed.”

That’s a concept you can only communicate to a lay audience by using the creative technique of metaphor.

4. Enhances credibility.

People are more likely to believe information if it’s presented as an anecdote than if it’s presented as a number, according to Peg Neuhauser’s Corporate Legends and Lore.

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

— Mark Twain

Why are stories more credible than statistics?

One reason is the Peer Principle of Persuasion: People connect with people. Readers find messages more readable, understandable and persuasive when you let a person stand for your point. That’s one reason human interest is so persuasive.

And why are statistics less credible than stories?

Your readers have learned not to trust every number they encounter. “There are three kinds of lies,” as Mark Twain said back in the day. “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

5. Lingers longer in the readers’ mind.

People are more likely to remember creative content than boring content.

One reason, according to Neuhauser: People process just plain facts in one way — intellectually, it goes through their brain. But they process the creative technique of storytelling in three ways:

1. Intellectually
2. Visually
3. Emotionally

That’s three ways readers can tamp it into their minds … and three ways they call pull it up later, when they want to remember the story and its point.

6. Gets shared.

If you want your message to get shared, you need to give readers something worth sharing. People are likely to share humor, stories and other entertaining elements.

People are most likely to share information, according to research by Chadwick Martin Bailey:

• Because I find it interesting/entertaining (72%)
• Because I think it will be helpful to recipients (58%)
• To get a laugh (58%)

But when was the last time you had some friends over for a pitcher of your signature margaritas, and you all spent the evening batting around a few good statistics?

If you want people to share, give them something shareable.

7. Slashes burnout, improves performance.

Content writers enjoy creating content that’s entertaining more than hashing out the same, old Ws and H again and again. That means they’re more likely to stay engaged with their work when they’re flexing their writing skills.

That’s a win-win for employers as well as communicators.

8. Sells products, services, programs and ideas.

As midcentury adman David Ogilvy said:

“Nobody ever sold anybody anything by boring them to death.”

Want readers to buy your Whozit or Whatzit? Choose creative content writing.

Learn more about creative content writing.

Find out about:

• A creative process for coming up with better topic ideas and other concepts
• How to optimize creative content for search engines and real readers
• How to write with description, wordplay and other creative techniques

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How small is small? One-third the size of a ladybug? The size of a sprinkle on an ice cream cone?

Analogy, metaphor, simile and other comparisons can help your readers “see” the size and scale you’re communicating.

Here’s how:

1. Help readers see.

A J-school friend of mine, The Wall Street Journal reporter Kevin Helliker, used that approach in his Pulitzer Prize-winning explanatory series on aneurysms:

OK, now I see it.

2. Ask, “What’s it like?”

In A Perfect Red, Amy Butler Greenfield describes her topic, cochineal, thus:

When you use adjectives like “voracious” and “quite small,” make sure your reader can see what that looks like. How voracious is “voracious”? “Quite small” says one thing; “one-third the size of a ladybug” says something entirely different.

3. Ask, “How big is big?”

In the movie “Armageddon,” the president’s staff is briefing the leader of the free world about the giant asteroid that’s hurling toward earth.

Just how big is it? the president asks.

260,000 square miles and change, the team answers.

Finally, Billy Bob Thornton’s character steps in: “It’s the size of Texas, Mr. President,” he says.

Which means more: “261,797 square miles”? Or “the size of Texas”?

Turn numbers into things for easier understanding.

4. Add a zero.

What’s the difference between 10 and 10 billion?

Modern designers Charles and Ray Eames answered that question by zooming from a picnicker in a Chicago park out to the galaxies above him and back into the microscopic world inside his hand.

It’s an object lesson in communicating scale through analogy. And you can see it firsthand in Powers of Ten — the flipbook, the movie or the book.

5. Ask, “How small is small?”

When the late, great Kansas City Star columnist C.W. Gusewelle wanted to help readers understand the fragility of monarch butterflies as they migrate south for the winter, he wrote:

I don’t know whether I appreciate the analogy more or the four decimal points of precision!

Both make the point: It’s not enough just to communicate the numbers. You also need to help readers see them.

6. Put it in their pocket.

In Demon in the Freezer, Richard Preston’s amazing book about smallpox, the author uses comparison to help readers see size and scale, too:

How small is small? The size of jimmy on an ice-cream cone.

Need to convey size and scale? Show your reader how small or large your number is through comparison.

____

Source: Kevin Helliker and Thomas M. Burton, “The Battle of the Bulge: Aneurysm Tests Could Save A Lot of Lives, if Performed,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 13, 2003

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When 6,000 power poles went down in New Orleans during a series of ice storms, Entergy Senior Communications Specialist David Lewis needed a way to make that number tangible in an executive speech.

So he bought 6,000 wooden kitchen matchsticks and put them in a clear plastic container. Then he had the speaker display the matches when making his point about the broken poles.

One thing I really like about Lewis’ approach is that he synced his analogy with his subject.

The best metaphors “match” the topic. Matches conceptually go with power outages, and matchsticks are the shape of power poles.

Need to illustrate a big number? Find a way to help audience members visualize it. Big numbers don’t mean anything without a comparison.

How high is high?

When Kevin Helliker and Thomas Burton wrote their Pulitzer Prize-winning series about aneurysms in the aortic artery for The Wall Street Journal, they needed to explain how weightlifting affected blood pressure. They wrote:

The power of zero

When Tim Rush, a PR pro at Snapp Norris Group, needed to explain a big number, he asked his subject matter expert to illustrate the difference between a million and a billion.

One million seconds is about 12 days, Rush was able to report. One billion seconds is about 32 years.

Illustrate the difference some zeros make.

How many steps in a Krispy Kreme?

“Food Court” — Men’s Health’s data bit on caloric crimes — recently featured this item:

Yikes!

Two techniques to steal from this passage:

1. Compare big numbers(1,140 calories) to something else (marching up a temple’s steps 15 times) to help readers understand them.
2. Bring consequences homeby putting the reader in the scenario and writing directly to “you.”

And please … don’t pass the Krispy Kremes.

Give numbers context.

“Numbers without context, especially large ones with many zeros trailing behind, are about as intelligible as vowels without consonants,” writes Daniel Okrent, former New York Times ombudsman.

Don’t make your message so hard. Give readers context along with their statistics. Turn numbers into things. Ask, “What’s it like?”

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As a reality TV superfan, I’ve learned a lot about writing from “Project Runway” episodes.

For one thing, time management counts. The most talented designers sometimes trip over deadlines: If your model walks down the runway in a bra and a button, you’re going home no matter how brilliant your sketch looked.

The same thing’s true in writing. It’s what you deliver — on deadline — that counts.

One way to write better, easier and faster, then, is not to overdesign. A big piece of time management boils down to knowing whether you’re creating a wedding gown or a shift, a dissertation or a direct mail letter.

Hitting your number — aka writing to length — can save you an enormous amount of time. So instead of overwriting, then underwriting, map out a plan for the length of your piece before you write a single word.

1. Budget your word count.

To write to length, start with your assigned word count. Then allocate a word count to each section of your piece.

2. Map out your story.

Now determine how you’re going to use those words — which statistics, success stories and other facts and ideas will make up each paragraph.

At this point, you’ll start to see that some things won’t fit. I call this “editing before you write,” because it allows you to make most of your decisions about what goes in and what stays out before you write the first word.

The alternative: Burning time writing everything, then burning more time cutting elements after you’ve already written them.

3. Track your budget.

Once you start writing, check your word count after you finish each section. That lets you know how well you’re spending your words and whether you have more or fewer words than budgeted for the next sections.

Count me in

I don’t claim that this system allows me to hit the word count perfectly on each piece I write. But I come pretty close — plus or minus 10%, maybe.

Over the course of my career, that’s saved me hundreds and hundreds of hours of overwriting, then cutting. That’s certainly more time by far than I’ve invested in mapping out my pieces before I write.

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