Why clarity beats cleverness, and what your audience actually wants from your messaging
Online, offline. At work. At home. We’re flooded with messages. Emails, updates, announcements, bulletins, strategy decks, newsletters, teasers for the latest show we absolutely must binge. And most of them? They get skimmed, misunderstood, or ignored completely.
Not because we don’t care. But because the message wasn’t clear. Whoever sent whatever forgot about the basics: Get the audience right, and everything else follows. Get it wrong and what should have been simple gets buried in noise, jargon or generic brand-speak.
In my work as a strategic communications consultant, I see this again and again: organisations with smart people, good intentions, and real value—struggling to say what they mean in a way that sticks.
What’s going wrong?
When communication doesn’t land, it usually comes down to one of three things:
- It’s not clear who the message is for.
Internal? External? Customers? Staff? Unless nuclear war is imminent, the “everyone” approach rarely works. - It’s not clear what you want the reader to do.
Is this a call to action? A change of mindset? A story? Or just noise to fill a slide? Something new to watch, or read. Or not. Your call, really. - It’s not written in a way people can absorb.
Long sentences. Mixed metaphors. Shifting tones. Acronyms. Management-speak. It all causes the reader to tune out.
What does good communication look like?
It respects your audience’s time. It delivers something useful.
And above all—it makes sense. Quickly.
It’s not always short. But it’s never padded.
It’s written by someone who understands not just words, but what those words need to do. And who knows how to make that happen. AI is good, but it’s artificial.
Which brings me to point three: It’s not afraid to be human. But it never rambles.
How I can help
I work with organisations, founders, and change-makers to turn fuzzy messaging into communications that land—with teams, clients, and audiences alike.
On a typical working day, I’ll be…
- Auditing existing messaging and content
- Clarifying tone of voice and internal language
- Ghostwriting or shaping LinkedIn posts and communications updates
- Helping leadership teams explain hard things in easy words
- Building messaging frameworks that teams can use and trust
Clarity isn’t a luxury
Get your messaging right, and you speed up decisions, strengthen trust, and move people—literally and emotionally.
If you’re building something important but struggling to explain it, I’d love to help you shape the story.
Get in touch today. I’d love to take 20 minutes of your time to see if there’s a way we could work together.
