WHY SHORT WORKS

 

 

In Boston in 1830, the craze was for mis-spelling phrases, then using the mis-spelled initials in speech.

Only those in the know would get it, which was of course the whole point.

So, for instance:

KC stood for ‘knuff ced’ (enough said).

OW stood for ‘Orl Wright’ (all right).

NG stood for ‘no go’.  SP stood for ‘small potatoes’, and so on.

Two hundred years later, only one phrase has endured:

OK stood for ‘oll korrect’ (all correct).

One of the main reasons OK caught on was it was a neutral affirmative, it accepted without judgement, it was a quick way to acknowledge a communication.

This made it perfect for the telegraph, which US railways then used over long distances, the morse code system was simply dots and dashes.

The letter O was just two dots, and the letter K was dash dot dash.

In fact in 1865 the railway manual specified:

“No message is ever regarded as transmitted until the office receiving it gives OK.”

In time, it came to mean that if something was OK it was up to standard.

So companies began changing the C in their name to K, as in: Kool Klothing for a retailer, Kant Leek for a plumber, Better Krust for bread, and Kook Rite for ovens.

Some firms that adopted it are still around: Kraft, Kleenex, Krispy Kreme, Kool Aid.

It was one of the first words spoken on the moon: “Contact light. OK, engine stop”.

Short mnemonics have adapted to modern media, take the internet:

IMO, OMG, IDK, TLDR, NSFW, ROFL, LMFAO, IYKYK, WTF, STFU, and FFS.

Mnemonics that have entered the mainstream are LOL, ASAP, FYI, DIY, ETA, and TGIF.

What makes these mnemonics stick is their unusual form and their brevity.

They separate themselves off and stand out, making themselves more noticeable.

In fact, we even use mnemonics when we can’t use letters.

The thumbs up sign first became popular in factories and the military, places where it was too loud to make yourself heard.

The graphic nature of the thumbs up sign made it perfect for the internet, where it’s taken over from OK as the neutral affirmative symbol.

The thumbs-up emoji is a basic graphic, so naturally it became universal when we began communicating visually, via computer screens.

You may be thinking “That’s all very well but what’s it got to do with me?”

Well, the answer is nothing, unless you’re in the creative dept.

But if you are in the creative dept, the answer is everything.

The value for those of us who actually make ads is in knowing about semiotics.

The dictionary defines semiotics as:

“The study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.”

In the creative dept, we need to understand semiotics because our job is communication.

The dictionary defines communication as: “The imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or some other medium.”

So – we should be studying signs, symbols, or any medium used to communicate.

Because, when we get anything in front of people’s eyeballs, we need to make sure they interpret it easily, quickly, and correctly.

Because those are stages one and two of advertising’s job:

1) Impact, 2) Communication, 3) Persuasion.

Stage three is the marketing message:

Strategy does WHAT gets remembered

We do HOW it gets noticed and remembered.

Delivering the message is up to creative, which is why simple works.

The more we understand that process, the better we can do it.

And the more pretentious and complicated we make it, the less chance it has of working.

OK