I was reading the Sunday Times this morning and was looking through the business section, when a job advert caught my attention, not because I want a new job, but because I couldn’t actually understand what role they were trying to fill. Whoever had written the advert had obviously had a thesaurus at hand and used it every available opportunity to the point that nothing really made any sense any more. In fact, each week the columnist Roland White who writes his Atticus column in the Sunday Times, takes time to point out the most pointless job of the week and the language used to advertise the position. Which got me to thinking about how important it is keep things simple and straightforward, especially in the the world of marketing. People need to understand what the benefits of your product or service are quickly and easily, if you make it difficult for them you risk losing their attention. It then brought to mind the chaps at Common Craft, who have been making plain English videos to explain new or complex products for the past few years.

Here is one that is a couple of years old, but it explains how social networking works, it is fun to watch, easy to understand and most of all it is only a couple of minutes long, So the next time you sit down to write something, keep it simple, benefits focused and think about the person on the receiving end.