Disorientation

I was in one of those underground parking lots this morning, trying to find my car. This happens to me a lot. Some of these lots are arranged fairly logically, others kind of wind around in and out with weird angles and such. I get totally disoriented.

Not everybody is this way. Some people (like my son Kevin) could find their way out the Maze of the Minotaur. But not me.

Disorientation, among other things, is a loss of context. It means that you don't know where you are relative to the big picture. Wandering around in this mess, I realized this is what some web sites are like: mazes. And so are other marketing communications.

Once you're in, you quickly get disoriented and lose context. The answer, of course, is to provide lots of signposts, plenty of context, and places where people can pop out into the open and see where they've been and what's ahead.

Think about your marcomm and ask yourself how likely people are to get disoriented once they're in your "maze."

Cheers