Communications Breakdown

If you’re finding it increasingly hard to concentrate and remember things it’s probably because you’re being bombarded with more than 100,000 words a day.

The average adult hears or reads 100,500 words a day, researchers at the University of California at San Diego have discovered. And the ‘day’ takes into account only waking hours outside work – meaning the true figure is much higher.

The Daily Mail reported on 14 December that: ‘Researcher Roger Bohn investigated the amount of information people are exposed to inside and outside the home, for activities other than work.
‘Trips to the cinema, listening to the radio, talking on the phone, playing video games, surfing the internet and reading the newspaper were all factored in to create a ‘snapshot of the information revolution’.

‘It concluded that the average adult was exposed to more than 100,000 words daily and 34 gigabytes of information – or a fifth of the storage capacity of a notepad computer. There are concerns our brains are being overloaded and even that their structure is being changed by the flood of data.’

Commenting on his research professor Bohn said: ‘I think one thing is clear: Our attention is being chopped into shorter intervals and that is probably not good for thinking deeper thoughts.’
From a communications point of view how can we get messages heard with so much background noise? Creativity is clearly essential in order to create ‘standout’, but so is targeting.
Whilst the sheer amount of communications is increasing so is our ability to match messages to audiences. So rather than trying to shout louder, maybe you should consider spending time really planning what you want to say, and who you want to say it to and then decide which marketing communications tool is best suited to your needs.

Pelican Communications are specialists in the environmentfood and drinkoutdoor and leisure and packaging sectors and offer a range of services such as media relations, brand management, event management and people developmentContact us for marketing and communications expertise.

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