Squeeze together juicy facts to start your story
Embeddable tooth implants. Batman’s tax bill. Zombie slayers.
Like squeezing together a lump of coal to make a diamond, compression of details condenses fascinating facts into a passage that’s more than the sum of its parts.
Take a tip from these Silver Anvil Award winners, and try compression of details.
Pit that nickel against Nickelodeon
Fleishman-Hillard’s John Armato used that approach for this lead for a press release for H&R Block by Fleishman-Hillard/Kansas City:
For this approach, you choose more than one (and, to be fair, almost always three) examples to make your broader point.
The internet in my tooth …
Marie Hatter uses compression of details for the Cisco blog post “The Internet of Everything Hearts Your Health”:
A smart watch responds to touch to help ease the loneliness of long-distance relationships.
A bracelet records daily physical activity and caloric intake and provides recommendations to achieve health goals.
These capabilities may have seemed like a dream only a decade ago but are now a reality, thanks to the Internet of Everything.
Internet of Everything? That’s huge! The internet in my tooth? Now we’re talkin’.
Make your audience the lead.
Lisa Gurry brings the world of gaming down to size with a compression of details in the promotion “Your Invitation Has Arrived: Xbox One Ready for Millions of Fans on Nov. 22”:
Xbox One? Too big. Zombie slayers? I’m in.
… Who lived in a shoe.
Mark Zelermyer brought this lead, for Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, home with compression of details:
That’s compression of details.
When does this approach not work? When the details aren’t really details.
In “Extra! Extra! New Cisco Brand Launches Today — Get the Details Here,” writers miss the mark by compressing generics:
TV? Newspaper? Internet? TOO BIG!
To get our attention, bring it down to size.
Next steps
Learn how to get concrete details into your lead.
Hook readers with great leads
You’re not still packing all of the Ws into the first paragraph, are you? Cranking out “XYZ Company today announced …” leads? If so, your News Writing 101 class called and wants its leads back!
To win today’s fierce competition for your readers’ attention, you need more sophisticated, nuanced leads — not the approaches you learned when you were 19.
Learn how to hook readers with great leads at our lead-writing workshop.
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