Toxic assets, balance sheets, insolvencies, mark it to market ... the media is hurtling jargon and concepts at the public to try to explain to us what’s going on with our banking system.
If you’re like me you’re probably having a hard time making heads or tails of it all. The big ideas are pretty clear: people irresponsibly borrowed money to buy houses that the banks irresponsibly lent them, people are loosing their jobs and defaulting on their mortgages, housing prices are dropping, banks are in danger of going under.
However if you pick up the paper or turn on the TV you’ll see our nation’s leaders and the leaders of these financial institutions constructing phrases that are meaningless, and quite frankly intimidating, for the rest of us.
The authors of Made to Stick call this the “Curse of Knowledge” - this is when people who’s lives are immersed in complex concepts try to explain things to people who’s lives aren’t. This is a common problem of marketers - us agency folks often find ourselves guilty of it too.
This week’s episode of This American Life does a great job of breaking things down and explaining them in a way that we can actually understand. At the beginning of the program they claim that by the end you’ll understand things enough to formulate your own opinion on the current state of affairs, rather than just sit in front of your computer and watch the market drop with each frightening headline.
In fact they manage to explain to us what a balance sheet is in an entertaining way. The understanding of this fundamental (and very boring) financial concept is the first step in understanding everything else that’s happening. Not all of us have taken a class in economics folks.
This is a great example of how understanding and empathizing with your audience can lead to simplifying the complex for a more powerful (and even entertaining) delivery of your message.
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