There is a straight line between the increasingly bullshit way information is presented online and the way I approach communications work.
A headline on a hockey page that once said, “Oilers recall two players ahead of Saturday’s game” becomes “Oilers make major roster move and it’s shaking up the hockey world.” Same information, except the useful part has been deliberately withheld because the business model needs the click.
AI search summaries now make things worse. If the headline and article simply answer the question, AI can increasingly give you the answer (right or wrong) without sending you to the publisher at all. In this new reality, clarity can actually cost traffic, while ambiguity, outrage and manufactured curiosity become profitable.
Years of clickbait have changed how people consume information. We now skim. We expect padding, and distrust headlines because they have burned us. We become increasingly irritated when a simple answer requires three clicks, downloading a PDF, or listening to 15 minutes of a podcast rambling on to get to the point.
This has all increasingly shaped how I approach website design in particular and communications in general.
My philosophy is a pretty simple carryover from my news days: Tell people what they need to know, not everything we know. That does not mean conceaing info. It means respecting time.
The objective is not to keep somebody on a website longer or demonstrate the full depth of the organization’s knowledge. It is to understand what they came for, give them the useful answer where they land, and then offer deeper dives if they actually want or need them. A scan of a page should quickly tell site visitors where the business is, when they are open, and what the customer can expect when they get there.
That means clear hierarchy, useful headings, core information on the page, “Learn More” as an option rather than an unnecessary next step.
Internet marketing has become increasingly sophisticated at capturing attention while becoming progressively worse at respecting it.
Good communications should do the opposite of that.
– Stephen Dafoe, CDMP