Communicate Benefits, Not Details

Posted on Monday, April 9, 2007 by Frank Roche

You could make an ad for Coke that talked about its ingredients. How it tastes. The shape of the bottle. Or you could make this ad.

The ad (slightly NSFW) shows the difference between communicating benefits and communicating details. Benefits are a feeling; details are dry. One of the top communicators of our generation recently wrote: “If you have limited space and want to communicate technical information, it almost always is either so general as to be of limited use, or dull or both.” Getting communication boiled down to its essence takes time and a little cleverness, but in the end it’s well worth the investment.

Now I’m off to run with the bulls.

[via In Search of Utopia]

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User Comments

  1. Santosh

    Apr 9th, 2007

    You are right on the mark. Communicating the benefits rather than the details applies to everything we do, teaching, job application etc.

    Cheers
    Santosh

  2. Frank Roche

    Apr 10th, 2007

    Hi Santosh. Isn’t that a universal piece of advice? It’s that old adage of “A picture is worth a thousand words, but a thousand words will never describe a picture.”

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