Good News Columns Not Rows
I wrote the good news column in today’s paper ❤️ pic.twitter.com/7SUNGRylV7
— Helena Horton (@horton_official) March 30, 2020
Today’s print edition run of what for a week or so has been an online compilation of coronavirus good news by London’s Telegraph broadsheet.
I’m already looking forward to further, with advances including the F1 racing car collab somehow designing, making and getting approved in a matter of days a brand new style of post-oxygen mask, pre-intensive care assisted breathing aid. Add in the distilleries now making hand sanitiser, uniform makers switching to medical gowns, home school help and much more besides. Such as building the world’s biggest hospital in under a week in London’s docklands. No fanfare necessary, Nightingale…
Other publications allow the good to shine too. Such as fashion mag, Elle, who at the time I blog here had a rolling list of 38 altruists relevant to their target audience.
There’s a pair of Sales pointers here I feel.
Good News.
I’m very much with Professor Steven Pinker on this. He rails against media – and not just of the lamestream kind – thinking a story holds merit only if of bad news. The unwavering hellbent approach of journalists that whatever a person in authority says, they must be talking nonsense. All more concerned with earning their own “gotcha” moment to add to their showreel and gain social media drools. To sadly quote the momentarily brilliant but quickly faded Jeremy Paxman, their only thought being “why is this lying bastard lying to me?”
Whilst holding power to account is essential, these gloomsters are presently pathologically unable to recognise goodness unless it’s of a kitten rescued from up a tree,
Westerners are perhaps understandably cynical of bulletins akin to those read by screaming news anchors leading with supposedly bumper mushroom crop figures from North Korean villages.
Be in no doubt though, that glad tidings do exist. And can be in greater breadth than reported doom.
In a selling setting, we ought tap into the good news. Remembering to signpost the pain, problem or peril is a must. Yet surely there are prospect personalities that will respond to positivism.
They may well already have in place the people, wherewithal, money and circumstance to succeed. Tell them. With cheers and trumpets. And sum up with the most obvious piece of good news. Namely they can get their much needed solution uniquely from you.
Thin columns.
These eight morsels of hope are presented not in the traditional document fashion of rows, but columns. Slim ones too. So slender, that some lines feature but a sole word.
The visual impact is striking.
Now imagine that template applied to a particular page of your Prop. Or a slide in your deck. Or ‘infodoc’-type handout during your meeting.
If the above little red diamond when adapted feels to texty, perhaps a small yet stark image instead can break each section.
You could probably guarantee that they’d see nothing else looking this way. With the brain suitably jolted, then much more likely to later recall (favourably) what you pitch.