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OPINION
Tell hero stories
“A Giant Sunspot Has Doubled in Size in 24 Hours, and It’s Pointed Straight at Earth.” Did that headline get your attention? It was designed that way. It was the lead in a recent Newsweek article. It was posted alongside stories about the war in Ukraine, crippling inflation, January 6 fallout, and mass shootings. The next time you have a proposal or presentation kickoff, trust and empower your marketing team to do what they do best.
Kraig Kern, CPSM
In the end, once I slogged through five unnecessarily technical paragraphs, the last part of the article simply stated, “That said, it’s worth noting that an M-class flare would probably not be particularly disruptive in any case.” Ugh! What a waste of time. Like so many people these days, I am exhausted by all of the negative headlines. They are relentless, frequently non-factual, and yet we consume them hungrily. The slang term for this is “doomscrolling.” Most people are familiar with the phrase, “If it bleeds, it leads.” That’s the first thing journalism students are taught. So, I experimented the other day when I opened the CNN , Fox News , and USA Today apps on my iPhone and scrolled down to the end of each page. Can you guess what I found (or didn’t find)? There wasn’t a single upbeat or feel-good story in any
news source that day. Not one. Not even in the sports sections. My point is that in the AEC business, we can control the narrative. We can share stories that make us feel good. Everyone loves a great hero or underdog story, right? So why don’t we write those instead of the typical, dull technical descriptions? Inevitably, we sometimes must write about subjects as exciting as watching water drip or paint dry. However, with a bit of time and creative thinking from your marketing team, overly-technical topics can be made more exciting. Have you read a typical proposal cover letter lately?
See KRAIG KERN , page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER OCTOBER 24, 2022, ISSUE 1462
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