Want people to be interested? Be interesting!

My clients pay me to communicate their messages in such a way as to cause individuals to respond. The first step in that process is to get people to take notice, an increasingly difficult task in our media-rich world.

Breaking through the clutter has been the marketer's assignment since the beginning of the profession. How we go about it continues to evolve.

The best advice I can give my clients is this: If you want people to be interested, you'd better be interesting.

A marketing message, no matter what the delivery method, must spark your interest, catch your eye and demand your attention. Boring does not cut it. Safe is a snooze. "Tried and true" equals "old and tired."

Turn the tables for a moment. What captures your attention? Which TV commercials do you like? What does it take to get you to turn up the radio volume in the car? How do you decide which items in the pile of today's mail get read and which get tossed? What is it about a website that gets you to go deeper than the home page?

Today you must engage the prospect immediately or lose him or her forever. Your message must be smart, memorable and resonate with something that is already "on the radar screen" of the potential customer. You can't force an idea into a closed mind, so you must find an opening that already exists.

The message must zero in on the self-interest of the individual or it will be ignored. Yet too many companies are too self-absorbed to do anything more than spout off about themselves and their own interests, which are seldom aligned with the customer's.

To be successful at attracting interest, you must succeed at being interesting. That means crafting a message that connects with the right prospects, delivered through the right channels, at the right time.

Say More by Saying Less

Thomas Jefferson was a prolific author and correspondent. His words continue to inspire us today. But he was also well aware of the power of brevity. Jefferson closed one three-page letter to a friend with an apology: "Forgive me for writing such a long letter, but I did not have time to write a shorter one."

Unfortunately, many writers today cannot keep themselves from rambling, unable or unwilling to pare their thoughts down to the essentials. Jefferson launched the world's greatest nation with a single page, the Declaration of Independence. But your local personal injury attorney needs to blast out a 3,000 word blog every week. Sad.

We should all follow the example of William Mulholland, the man responsible for developing the remarkable waterworks for the City of Los Angeles early in the last century. Mulholland was asked to speak at the dedication ceremony for a 233-mile aqueduct that brought water from the Colorado River across the desert to the city. When the first stream started to flow out from the aqueduct, Mulholland stepped up to the microphone and commemorated the momentous occasion by saying, "There it is. Take it."

Fewer and truer words were never spoken.

Paul Harvey, RIP

I was saddened to learn of the death over the weekend, at age 90, of radio legend Paul Harvey. Here was a man who lived his life the right way, and took us all along for the ride.

I was first introduced to Paul Harvey when my boss at a college co-op job forced us all to listen to his broadcasts during the lunch hour. At first I thought Paul was pretty corny, and that his enthusiasm was faked and affected. But the more I listened the more I came to understand that Paul Harvey truly enjoyed sharing his optimistic view of the world with anybody who would listen. And he was not ashamed to let us all know how much he cared. For a cynical young man, it was a revelation.

Years later, it was my turn to force my unwilling children to listen to Paul's "Rest of the Story" broadcasts. Like me, they were initially bored. But it did not take long for Paul to captivate them as he did me.

They don't make them like Paul Harvey anymore. Today's acid-tongued talk show hosts think they must be constantly on the attack in order to earn their keep. But Paul Harvey knew the secret to winning an audience was to tell a good story.

And "that's the rest of the story."