Amanda Biundo: On Messaging, Less is More
How often do you open a text message, get distracted, and forget it was there in the first place? How about your mail? How frequently do you walk to the mailbox, look through your mail quickly, and toss out yet another pre-qualified offer for a random credit card or other junk mail? If I had to guess, pretty often.
We live in a constantly moving world where information consumption is at an all-time high. We carry a minicomputer in our pockets that gifts us 24/7 access to the outside world. The news cycle is constant; we’re being advertised to everywhere we go, influenced when we open social media, told what to buy, who to support, where to visit, and how to live. Your message is just one of many a potential voter will see that day.
More isn’t always better regarding character count on your SMS or direct mail. Cutting through the clutter includes cutting down what you say to emphasize the most critical pieces of your message. Constant Contact suggests keeping your SMS messages to no more than 160 characters, including spaces, while other sources say to keep things under 300 characters. Whichever limit you go by, that is less than this paragraph.
On direct mail, it is similar. The best mail pieces I’ve produced in my career (and I’ve designed hundreds) let imagery tell the story as much as the words used. We often want to use every centimeter granted to us to fill with words, but in doing that, we’re buying a one-way ticket to a trash can.
As a New Hampshire voter, I’ve seen A LOT of political messaging (and I’ve also designed a lot of political mail and graphics). Being in the business, you live in a unique echo chamber that can fuzzy our view. Our candidate’s message is the most important thing: their story, their “why” for running – we helped them strategize, we’ve grown fond of them (hopefully), and we want the average voter to see the person we see. However, the average voter will never care about our candidate’s message like we do. We have a very narrow window of opportunity to get our SMS message or direct mail piece read, so we would be wise to heed this. Remember, less is more.
Ascent Gives Initiative
We’ve been fortunate enough to see our company grow over the years. This has given us the opportunity to give back and support causes that hold a special place in the hearts of our staff. With that, we are proud to announce our Ascent Gives initiative.
Each quarter, we will support a charity or cause that has been submitted by someone at Ascent. At random, we have picked our first cause to support the Lewy Body Dementia Association. Submitted by Mike Biundo, his dad, Amanda’s grandpa, suffered from Lewy Body Dementia and ultimately passed from complications of the disease.
Please join us, as we have pledged $1,000 in support of the Lewy Body Dementia Association. You can read more about their mission here.
