When we discuss a creative project with clients — a short film, podcast, talking head video, printed report, or even just a set of factsheets — we find the same single challenge showing up: almost universally, the client wants to make something that is too long.
Sure, it might be informational, and there might be a lot of genuinely useful stuff in there, but the journey that audiences will need to take to get that information is just too much of an investment.
People might not be any busier than they have been in the past, but there are certainly more electronic distractions out there fighting for your audiences’ attention.
So we have a really rough rule of thumb that is almost universally applicable: cut your envisioned comms product in half.
Almost every time we discuss the envisioned length of, say, an annual report, we hear our client say 40 pages, and we then suggest working together with them on a more engaging 20. A 10-minute short film can probably be done in a more exciting 5.
By setting this goal and trying to pack your content into a much smaller design, we can end up with a much tighter product. This might mean getting ruthless with editing and cutting away content, and it might even be a painful process that means some bits of your favourite content might not make it into the final production (see Slate’s article that discusses murdering your darlings).
There are three reasons to follow this design rule of thumb. First, it saves everyone a lot time. The difference between five and ten minutes of film is not simply five minutes of keeping the cameras on, but additional time for planning, script-writing, possibly booking more time for venues, taking up more film participants’ days at work, more audio-editing and film-editing, and more colour-correcting.
Sure, reducing the length and therefore increasing the density of, say, a report or a film script might need a smaller group of people to work during the planning stages of the production, but ultimately, this focus on the creation of a tight production will save a lot of time for everyone else down the line.
Second, your audience member will almost certainly appreciate a condensed, final product that gives them everything they need to know in a shorter period of time than something that risks boring them, confusing them, or leading them to shut your publication or close their browser before they get to the end.
And lastly, it makes your comms product ultimately cheaper, which means you can spend the saved time and energy on finding ways to make sure that your comms product gets the audience attention it needs.
