| Title | 'Keep It Simple Stupid'? Not If You're Asking for Help | |
| Date | Thursday June 01 2023, @02:10PM | |
| Author | hubie | |
| Topic | ||
| from the hits-a-little-close-to-home dept. | ||
'Keep it simple stupid'? Not if you're asking for help:
The toughest sell in business isn't a sell at all, strictly speaking. Convincing others to donate valuable time or resources to your cause, without any tangible compensation, is the rarest and most prized of communications skills. That is especially true in our age of digital mass communication, when written appeals jostle for attention in our email inboxes and social-media feeds every day.
[...] Jiyeon Hong, assistant professor of marketing at George Mason University School of Business, recently published a paper in Marketing Science (co-authored by Paul R. Hoban of Amazon) shedding light on why soliciting uncompensated help is so difficult for most of us. These solicitations may flout one of the most well-known rules of business writing: namely, "keep it simple stupid" (KISS).
The assumption behind "KISS" is that readers respond most strongly to lean prose that makes minimal mental demands. But Hong's research, including algorithmic analysis and a randomized controlled trial (RCT), suggests that simple, punchy writing is not always the most convincing for donors.
[...] "More concrete and specific content tended to be in the beneficial sentences," Hong says. "Acronyms and insider terms also appeared often in the more persuasive sentences." In direct opposition to the "KISS" rule, beneficial sentences were slightly longer and demanded more of the reader. Their average readability score was 9.51, compared to 8.72 for detrimental sentences. (Readability scores correspond to the grade level required to understand the sentence.)
For example, instead of describing diversity in vague language such as "Our school has a very diverse student population," a beneficial sentence would be densely packed with detail—e.g. "Our school is a Title 1 school serving a diverse and vibrant student population: 80 percent are students of color and nearly half are English Language Learners."
[...] Hong explains, "The readers are in cognitive mindset, trying to compare many options because they also have a limited budget. In this context, objectively delivering information can be more persuasive. Facts win out over emotions."
[...] "We conclude that the most successful appeals for help will not be those that make the simplest and tightest arguments. Instead, they will a) expose the reader to a modest amount of desirable difficulty; and b) put forth a detailed case that is low on emotional coloration," Hong says.
Journal Reference:
Jiyeon Hong et al, Writing More Compelling Creative Appeals: A Deep Learning-Based Approach, Marketing Science (2022). DOI: 10.1287/mksc.2022.1351
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