The Hindu Business Line : Your headline must have stopping power

In successful creative work, the message comes before you begin designing, says Margo Berman in Street-Smart Advertising: How to Win the Battle of the Buzz (www.macmillanpublishersindia.com).

Knowing where the message will be seen is crucial in developing the right message for the right medium or placement, she observes. “For example, if you have a small ad, you can’t have a long, complicated headline, because there’s no space for it. Or if you’re developing a message that relies on a strong visual, they must work as a unit, with each one supporting the other.” The author splits the message into two – the ‘headline’, which acts as the message of the ad, and the ‘slogan’, which serves as the message of the entire campaign. To help you phrase the headline, her advice is: ‘Ask yourself: What am I trying to say?’

“The most important point is that your headline must have stopping power. It must interrupt the viewers’ everyday activities and force them to look at the ad. It must be intrusive.”

The second component, the slogan, is the short phrase that positions the product in the mind of the consumer. “Think of it as the foundation of a house. You can change the windows, doors, paint colour, and décor, but the foundation stays intact.”

Recommended addition.

Create a culture of communication

Mastering Communi- cation at Work: How to Lead, Manage, and Influence
Ethan F. Becker and Jon Wortmann

What happens when effective communication is absent? Organisations shut down, say Ethan F. Becker and Jon Wortmann in Mastering Communication at Work: How to Lead, Manage, and Influence (www.tatamcgrawhill.com). Effective communication you can know is missing when the environment is highly political, when people talk about one another instead of to one another, and work just isn’t fun, the authors rue. An unhealthy communication environment can only attract top talent with money; employees aren’t engaged, and you risk the future success of the organisation, they add.

“Creating a culture of communication means creating an environment that sees stellar communication as essential, considers the development of it to be part of the norms of daily work, and rewards people for it.”

Useful read.

Seven attributes that distinguish Toyota

How Toyota Changed the World
K. Dennis Chambers

The first of the seven attributes that distinguish Toyota from all other carmakers is humility, writes K. Dennis Chambers in How Toyota Changed the World (www.jaicobooks.com).

Humility, he explains, promotes respect across the workspace, tends to keep gossip down, underscores the value of listening to others, and mitigates the tendency of most people to think that what they are doing is the most important thing to be doing at the time. An associated word in Japanese is hansei, to look inward or reflect on what one has done wrong.

“Japanese style is to offer criticism routinely, as a way of showing respect for the fact that the person receiving the criticism can – and wants to – improve. Praise is rare in older Japanese culture. Why should one be praised for doing what is good and honourable?”

Compelling insights.

D. Murali

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