A story about a duck

This Labor Day week, I’m sharing a recent Sound ADvice newsletter that my subscribers received recently about communication:

There’s an old story about a group of big-city folks who went on a bus tour to Henry’s Farm where they worked all day in the fields to experience rural life, firsthand.

At the end of the day, they assembled on Farmer Henry’s front porch, tired and hungry, waiting for the dinner bell.

As they sat on the porch, they could catch the aroma of some good, old home cooking coming from the country kitchen and grew even hungrier.

After some time, Farmer Henry came out of the barn, stepped up to the porch, and announced, “Well folks, the duck is ready to eat.” But Farmer Henry was puzzled by the group’s response.

Half of the tourists hurried into the farmhouse to wash up for dinner while the other half fell in line to follow him back to the barn.

What would you have done?

You see, when the farmer said, “The duck is ready to eat”, he thought his message was, “Hey folks, come on down to the barn, it’s time to feed the duck”, while half of his audience thought he was announcing it was time to eat the duck.

Many advertisers make the same mistake; not communicating what they really intended to communicate in their advertising.

Advertising is intended to get people to do one or both of two things: create awareness about your product or service, or get people to take action on what you are promoting.

Does your advertising communicate the message you think it does? An outsider’s objective review of your message can often help eliminate confusion in your message.

If you would like me to help you conduct an objective communications audit of your advertising message, click here.

Our goal is to gather detailed information about your business that will help create more compelling and focused ads that have a greater impact.