There Is Too Much to Read
Yes, I actually read the entire Mueller Report, but I’m what many call “a reader.” I read two newspapers a day, but that is a far cry from the amount of copy that is being produced every day. We are blasted with the data equivalent of 174 newspapers per day, according to a USC School for Communications doctoral student study.
The study estimated a daily average of 174 newspapers worth of data, or “1.9 zettabytes of information,” during the yearlong study period. I’d never heard of a zettabyte, but it sounds enormous. (Wikipedia describes a zettabyte this way: “A zettabyte is one sextillion (one long scale trilliard) bytes. The unit symbol is ZB. 1 ZB = 10007bytes = 1021bytes = 1000000000000000000000bytes = 1000exabytes = 1millionpetabytes = 1billionterabytes = 1trilliongigabytes.”)
According to the study, “Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, humankind can store at least 295 exabytes of information. (That’s a number with 20 zeroes in it.) Put another way, if a single star is a bit of information, that’s a galaxy of information for every person in the world.”
With all this clutter, there is no reason to use jargon, long sentences, complicated language, complex concepts, over-sized words, no bullets, bad stories …
We must make it easier to consume our copy, infographics and video. And there needs to be a bigger reward for taking the time in this galaxy of data.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.
