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CLARITY TRAVELS, CONFUSION DOESN’T
“Clarity travels. Confusion doesn’t.” Those four words, shared by Unilever’s Chief Marketing Officer Leandro Barreto last month, really resonated with me. While he was talking about marketing and brand messaging, the principle applies to almost every form of communication. Whether you’re giving a media interview, presenting to the board, speaking at a conference or simply explaining an idea to colleagues, your message only has value if people actually understand it. It sounds obvious, yet it’s surprising how often we forget.
I often notice this in media interviews, or in media training practice. Too many contributors talk around a subject rather than making their point. They assume the audience already understands the background, the jargon and the context. Most don’t. Take two fictional stock market commentators discussing the same issue. The first might say:
“If you look at the current shifts in Fed policy on rates, that might have some impact on the sector…”
This might be technically accurate but for many people it’s as clear as mud. Compare it with this:
“If US interest rates rise faster than the market expects, that’s likely to take some of the momentum out of the technology sector, where shares have already climbed around 20% this year.”
The second version answers the questions viewers are actually asking. It explains what has changed, why it matters and what the likely consequence will be. It doesn’t expect people to join the dots for themselves.
The first version, by contrast, leaves many non-specialists wondering:
- Is the impact positive or negative?
- What has actually changed in US interest rate expectations?
- Why do interest rates affect this particular sector?
- Should investors be concerned or encouraged?
That’s the difference between communicating information and communicating understanding. Subject experts often suffer from what psychologists call the curse of knowledge. Once we know something well, it’s surprisingly difficult to remember what it feels like not to know it. We skip steps, rely on shorthand and use language that feels perfectly natural to us but leaves everyone else behind.
Real clarity doesn’t happen by accident. It comes from working on your message again and again. So, strip away unnecessary words. Replace jargon with plain English , and test whether every sentence answers the questions the audience might be asking. The irony is that the clearest communicators often sound the most effortless. In reality, they’ve usually worked the hardest.
MEDIA TIP OF THE MONTH: In the Studio, Always Assume You’re Live
If you ever find yourself in a TV or radio studio, always act as if cameras and microphones are live – even during rehearsals, ad breaks, or casual chats before or after the interview. Never say anything you wouldn’t want your boss or mother to hear. Many public figures have been caught out this way. Former Prime Minister John Major once famously called colleagues “bstrds” off-air – except the mic was still on. In 2010, Gordon Brown referred to a voter as “bigoted” without realizing he was still connected to a radio mic. More recently, the then-Sainsburys boss Mike Coupe became a viral sensation, and not in a good way, when he was caught singing ‘we’re in the money’ while waiting to go on air to talk about a multi-billion-pound merger deal he was hoping to pull off.
PRESENTATION TIP OF THE MONTH: The Power of an ‘Incomplete’ Presentation
Never include something “just for completeness”. Presenters often overload decks with every available fact, either out of habit or to create a stand-alone document. The result is confusion, not clarity. Audiences rarely retain excess detail; they remember strong, focused points. If information is non-essential, it’s probably undermining your message by distracting from what matters most. Nobody in an audience ever said ‘I wish there’d been more slides’.
