A few weeks ago I was asked to create a video for a client that explained the changing world of marketing and how they've changed along with the world. How the client creates many touchpoints to reach the consumer. The video should be, I was told, about 3 to 4 minutes.
This morning I put the finishing touches on round 15 of the copy--I had to finish it, I was recording the VO. While in the session I discovered that the 3-4 minute video I started with was now 7:43 in length.
Data visualization, as we know, is all the rage. So I went back to my table and did some data visualization on this project. On one axis I plotted the number of revisions from 1 to 15. On the other I plotted the number of words (these include video instructions) from 770, where I started to around 1800, where I wound up.
I call this, "The story of advertising."
Oh the humanity.
ReplyDeleteTime was, the longer you spent on something, the more concise you could make it. "I didn't have time to write a shorter letter" as Mark Twain is reputed to have said.
Sadly not in these heady days of 'amends' and 'builds' though. I shit on the neck of the people who use these horrid terms.
Metaphorically, of course.
The struggle between complicators and simplifiers is eternal.
ReplyDeleteIt takes just one well-placed complicator to undo the good work of a dozen simplifiers.