Make it clear or don’t make it

Speaker A: Hey, there. Welcome back to Death to the Corporate Video. My name is Guy Bauer. I'm the founder and creative director of Umalt, a B2B video ad agency. And today's topic is all about clarity. And I'll try to make this as non ranty as I can, but it will get a little ranty. I as in, like, kind of all over the place. You're. You're. You're getting the raw, unfiltered feed directly from my brain, not run through any kind of outline or anything. This is if you were sitting in front of me and we were talking, and then I just started going off on clarity. All right, so here we go. So this is a quote from Dave Ramsey. I love Dave Ramsey. I've followed the total money makeover. I have the EveryDollar app. And no, this is not sponsored by Dave Ramsey or anything like that. But Dave Ramsey has this saying. To be unclear is to be unkind. And that's how you have to treat clarity with your audience. Now, I'm assuming you're a marketer or you're a video ad maker, and your job is to tell an audience something. And time and time again when. And I've been doing this for a long time. When we get into post, the biggest note out of me that watches it or our client or whoever is. That didn't make sense. Uh, that part or I'm not sure what's happening here. And raise your hand virtually if that's ever happened to you. Either that comment has come in about your work, or you've given that comment and there's audio problems. You can fix this music isn't right. You can fix. Uh, you know, that person said that line a little weird. Is there another take of them saying that easily fixed clarity is super hard to fix? Because clarity has to be baked in from the very start of the project. And the more I do this, the more I keep realizing that, oh, my gosh, that has to be our number one objective at all times. Uh, there's a quote from Errol Morris that I learned by the way of George Tenenbaum, great copywriter. And he said that Errol Morris told him once that subtlety is for amateurs. And I agree with that. I think in terms of. That's why you see when you see super bowl ads or even movies, anytime someone's on their phone. Have you ever noticed the app is super simplified? They don't show you the raw Facebook app or whatever like that unless it's some kind of raw TV show. But if meant to understand what's happening on that cell phone. It's a super simplified interface. Typically it's just a prompt, like three to four words, super big and a button. Right. That's how visuals need to be in our ads. And that's. And take. That's very, That's a very tangible way to do it. But then there's also just the concepts themselves. Um, they have to be simple enough to be grasped. Grasped by people who are giving you their half attention. Unless your ad has been written up, you know, by ad week, as you must watch this ad and give it your full attention. Unless your ad is getting that treatment, assume that people will be watching with 50% attention. They're not going to give the ad the full attention. So not only do you need to be clear enough for someone giving you full attention, you actually have to be clear enough for someone to be. That's giving you half attention. So how does this, like, what does this actually mean? It means that our concepts can't be too brainy. Right. Or thinky. Right. It'd be one thing if people are watching our ads in a quiet theater where there's no cell phones and stuff like that, and they can kind of figure it out like the Matrix or like a Christopher Nolan film, But our ad cannot be that thinking. They actually have to be more obvious than not obvious. We still can surprise our viewers. We still can force them to think and earn their meal a little bit. But if you're, if, uh, this podcast episode is really meant to tell you that if you're deciding between two options, one of them makes your ad more subtle and more, you know, kind of thinky and high level. And then the other option is that it makes it more obvious and clear. Always defer to clear. I can tell you this with, you know, over 30 years experience making, uh, videos and then 16 years doing this professionally is always opt for clarity over subtlety. Subtlety is for amateurs. To be unclear is to be unkind. I don't know any other sayings, but, uh, yeah, that's the goal of this episode. Be clear. Be clear in your visuals. Be clear in your concepts, Be clear in your dialogue, Be clear in your audio. Be clear in the people speaking. They should speak clearly. It's so hard to get people to pay attention. And if we're not clear, they will never pay attention. We have zero chance of reaching folks. So that's it. Thanks for listening and I hope you have a great rest of your day. See you. Uh,