Was your scholarship video rubbish as well?
By Benedict Tatham
Was your scholarship video rubbish as well?
Did anyone else have complete hair tearing, teeth grinding, missing-cup-with-water-pouring indecision about what the hell to do for the scholarship??
Then, only to find a few weeks after handing it in saying to themselves “…damn…that was actually meant to be easy, I should have done the first thing that came in to my head…”??
That’s right quite a few of you I imagine – because often our first ideas have the most clarity.
I wish I had read ‘Made To Stick’ before I started my scholarship video….
I now realise that I got lost in the detail…and failed to hammer home the core message.
You can so easily get caught up in a streeaaaam of ideas, deciding on one for sure, then throwing away that idea, asking too many peoples opinions etc etc (don’t ask your mum her advice she is tooo old and doesn’t understand your world…sorry mum it was all your fault).
My video as result was over thought, pretentious and confusing, it lacked punchiness and left everyone going – “Sooooo just explain what you mean by that again?”
As Chip and Dan Heath explain in Made To Stick…journalists often find themselves looking too far into the detail of a story, to which point they loose track of what they were trying to say – it’s called “Burying the Lead.”
Apparently I also had “The Curse of Knowledge” like when a tapper who knows the tune they are tapping to can’t understand when someone fails to guess it – “it’s so obvious!”
Well tappers and journalists are cursed, like I became making my scholarship video – once we think we understand something we find it hard to believe other people can’t.
They say there is only two ways to beat the “Curse of Knowledge” and avoid “Burying the Lead”
- Don’t know anything
- Transform your ideas.
I failed on both accounts – thanks for the diagnosis Nashy boys.
In short:
Keep….It…..Simple
p.s I knew I should have just strangled that chicken.
@benedicttatham
