This was originally posted 5 years ago. Opinions, facts and reality may have changed.
The art of subtlety is often lost in the digital world. When you’ve only got 280 characters to hand on Twitter, conversations quickly turn into absolutes, with no room for shades of grey. And if visitors are only granting you eight seconds of their time before deciding whether to stay or go – you have to make a swift impression.
Too often it can feel like nuance is something from a different age; where men wore top hats and women giggled demurely behind handkerchieves.
And, to some degree, this is true. To cut through you need to be bold. Occasionally brash. And definitely memorable.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t also be subtle. Direct in some ways but subtle in many, many others.
Because marketing isn’t just about creativity and insight. About shouting loud from the nearest hilltop about why your product’s so fabulous.
It’s also about psychology. Planting seeds, directing people in the direction of travel you want, and converting interest into repeated sales.
What makes people interested in x? Why using colour y encourages visitors to interact. The right words. Suggestion. Inference. Conjecture. Get inside the mind of your potential customer, work out what makes them tick and then present solutions back to them.
So, whilst your “headline” – whether that be the front cover of a brochure, the landing page of a website or the first line of a press release – needs to create an impact; everything else can demonstrate the art of nuance.
Or “softly, softly, catchee monkey” as the men in the top hats used to say.