KiwiStreet. Greater clarity. More style.

My first serious girlfriend trained as a school teacher but earned her living as a journalist.  Her successor was a journalist who worked in PR before going on to edit a weekly magazine.  And her successor was a journalist who drifted into advertising.

From these three bright (and feisty) women, I learned several important lessons.

First, I learned that ‘man bites dog’ is news.  But ‘dog bites man’ is not.

Second, I learned that ‘if it bleeds, it leads’.  Gore, conflict, and disasters pull in the readers.  The gorier, the more conflicted, the more disastrous the better.

Third, I learned that every positive story has a dark underside – even if it’s only in the mind of some looney conspiracy theorist.  And, if you want to hook the readers, you ignore the dark underside at your peril.  ‘Readers just do not want to read good news,’ the second of my lady friends used to say.

Each of these lessons was learned more than 30 years ago – long, long before the advent of 24/7 news.  Since then, everything has been multiplied by ten.  Or maybe by 100.

And yet, every morning and every evening, I have to remind myself that the newspaper editors and the radio and TV newsroom editors are just putting out what people want to read, listen to, or watch.  Because if people don’t read, listen to, or watch their news, they won’t have any advertising; which means they won’t have any revenue; which means they won’t have anything.

Personally, I would be happy to pay to read, listen to, or watch advertising-free news.  But it would need to be very well researched, very well written, and very well presented.  And that would be quite a step up from most of today’s so-called news.

Getting someone to change their mind is never easy.

When I was growing up, we had a neighbour, a retired accountant, who held strong and often controversial views on pretty much any topic you cared to name.  Give him an audience – and a cup of tea or a glass of beer – and he would tell you why many of the then well-known truths were simply not true.  His data and his logic seemed sound.  And yet few people ever believed him.

Fifty or so years later, it turns out that, on several topics, he was definitely more right than wrong.  Unfortunately, many of the people who refused to believe him all those years ago are no longer around to acknowledge his perspicacity.

Max Planck, one of the founding fathers of quantum theory, once said that a new truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents.  It triumphs because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up with the new truth.

To a greater or lesser extent, we all have our confirmation biases.  We are all more inclined to believe new information that confirms and supports our already-held mental models.  Whereas we are likely to discount or ignore information that challenges our already-held beliefs.

If you need proof of this, spend a few minutes scrolling through the comments appended to just about any online op-ed piece.  You will quickly see that the yea-sayers were already in the author’s camp before they sat down at their keyboards.  The naysayers, on the other hand, were almost certainly from the other side.  The person who says: ‘I think I’m going to have to change my mind’ is very rare indeed.

This is a challenge for anyone presenting the ‘surprising’ results of a piece of research or trying to pitch a ‘different’ solution.  Whether the new idea is of a scientific, commercial, or political nature, it is going to have to battle against readers looking for confirmation of their already-held beliefs.

Sadly, authors are often their own worst enemies.  First, many have a tendency to ‘shout’ at their non-believing readers.  And no one likes being shouted at.  Second, in an effort to present their view in the best possible light, many have a tendency to totally disregard any data that doesn’t support their argument.  They tell of ‘an astonishing increase of 89 percent’, but neglect to mention that this ‘astonishing increase’ was based on a three-year data set selected from an otherwise unremarkable 128-year series.

And, if neither of these ploys works, they often resort to demonising any reader who fails to share their opinion.  Labelling people who don’t buy into the anthropogenic climate change argument as ‘deniers’ is a good example.  Unfortunately, shouting ‘You, sir, are an idiot!’ is seldom a good way to get someone to change their mind.

So what can you do?

The best advice that I ever received on this subject was from a man who had been both a successful editor and a successful publisher.

‘If you think your reader is likely to hold a different view to the one which you are about to express, keep this in the forefront of your mind.  Then express your own view clearly and succinctly, using the simplest language that you can.  Explain what you need to explain and refute what you need to refute.  And always respect your reader.’

It doesn’t guarantee success.  But it does seem to produce better results than most of the alternatives.

When I was a young writer, I occasionally worked with another writer who had a sign on his office wall saying: Advertising is but promise writ large.  As I recall, the observation was attributed to Samuel Johnson.

I was reminded of Dave’s sign when, several years later, I was given the task of writing up the results of some research into the likely success (or otherwise) of a proposed new investment product.

The research – in-depth interviews with more than 120 potential customers – suggested that the product was almost certain to fail.  Only seven people said that they might give the product serious consideration.  And more than 50 suggested that it was a con (or words to that effect).

The man who had commissioned the research was not happy.  It was not the result that he had expected or wanted.

A meeting was called between the research agency and the commissioning client.  And, as the person who had largely written up the final report, I was also asked to attend.

The meeting began with the client stating, in no uncertain terms, that the researchers had clearly got it wrong.  His own gut feeling, and more than 20 years’ experience of selling investment products, told him that the proposed product would be a winner.

The head of the research agency said that he could understand the client’s disappointment, but the findings were pretty conclusive.  The methodology was proven.  The sample was robust.  And the findings simply did not support the client’s gut feeling.

‘So what did you actually tell these people?’ the client asked.

The research director explained that, after an initial exploration of the interviewees’ past and present investment experiences, they were given an outline of the proposed product and how it would work, and ….

‘Let me stop you right there,’ the client said.  ‘That’s where you went wrong.  If these guys know what the product really is and how it really works, then of course they are not going to buy it.  The secret is to sell them the dream, to sell them the promise.  The other bits can be buried in the small print.’

The client went ahead and launched the new product.  And it failed.  Spectacularly.  Although not before a few gullible souls had lost their life savings.

I guess the moral of the story is: by all means, write your promise large.  But not too large.