If you ever stopped by my office at Toy House, you saw the frying pans on the wall behind my head. Each one had a hole right through the bottom of the pan.

Target practice?

Nope. Just one big solitary spike sticking straight up out of a board, upon which I slammed each of those frying pans during a presentation.

The demonstration comes from a story I heard ages ago about a copywriter asked to write the ad copy for a big company. I include the story in my new book Most Ads Suck (But Yours Won’t). Here is the excerpt from the book …

A large company wasn’t getting the results they wanted out of their advertising. The company sequesters its marketing team away for the day to come up with a new campaign. After hours of deliberation and debate, the team finally comes up with the twelve most important talking points for the new campaign.

They call in the copywriter.

The team leader starts explaining to the copywriter all the points they need made.

“Point number one, blah, blah, blah. Point number two, blah, blah, blah …”

At this moment the team leader looks up to see the copywriter sitting there doing nothing.

“Aren’t you going to take any notes?”

Silently, the copywriter reaches into a large bag by his feet and pulls out a board with twelve shiny nails sticking straight up out of the board. He lays it down on the table, nails pointing upward. He then takes out a frying pan and slams it down on the bed of nails. The whole room echoes with the sound as the advertising team all jumps backwards. The copywriter then holds up the pan so that everyone can see the pattern of indents from the nails on the bottom of the pan.

The copywriter then pulls out another board. This one has one solitary spike on it. He places it on the table and slams the frying pan down onto this board. The spike impales the pan instantly. The pan goes down flush, stuck to the board.

The copywriter looks up at the startled crowd and asks, “How many points do you want me to make?”

I gave you my resume last week. That’s the whole kit and kaboodle (almost) of all my skills and talents all rolled into one. Out in the world of job applications, however, I am busy applying the Make Only One Point principle to my resume. Depending on the job, my resume will be tailored to include only the relevant information.

If I am applying to a Marketing & Advertising Job you don’t need to see all my Corporate Training experience. If I am applying to a Corporate Trainer job, you don’t need to know that I managed a multi-million dollar inventory. If I am applying to an Inventory Control job, you don’t need to know about the extra training I took at Wizard Academy. I’m trimming it down to the information you need (and providing more detail of that relevant info in the process.)

Make Only One Point works in advertising. It works in blogs. It works in emails. It works in pretty much all persuasive copy. It also works when applying to a job. It also works when communicating with your children. It just plain works. Adopt it and see how your results change.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS One of the benefits I have seen from making only one point in emails is that it eliminates questions going unanswered. People often respond to the first question in an email and rarely even read the second question. Also, it helps people who sort their emails by topic. If you have two points from different topics, you make it difficult for the other person to sort your email in a relevant fashion. Get the point?

PPS The demo is part of the Making Your Ads More Effective presentation. Everyone seems to like that part. They also like the advertising makeovers I do at the end. That’s the real meat. They get to see the six principles put into action. Call me when your group wants to take your advertising to the next level.