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I love Madison, my new hometown. I love the lakes that are an essential part of this fair city….but I am pretty clueless as to what can harm these lakes (beyond the obvious – I get that toxic chemicals are an awful thing, mind you).

So when reading the local paper recently, I saw an ad for a non-profit called My Fair Lakes, and this tagline caught my eye:

Love your lakes, don’t leaf them

Interesting.  I went on to read more.  I then saw the following “tip,” or so I presumed it was a tip:

Leafish #5 – What you do with your leaves affects your lakes.

I interject now my thoughts at the time: I am with this messaging so far. And I should explain, there is something I need to learn under this topic - as someone who recently lived in DC, and not too long ago in Philly and central Virginia, I haven’t had a lot of education about lakes. Some rivers in those locations, a reflecting pool perhaps, but these were not the land of lakes.  OK, Laurel, I think to myself, pay attention.  Learn something.

The ad continues:

Rain seeping through leaf piles creates a nutrient-rich “tea” that flows along the curb and into the storm drains, even if the leaves themselves don’t move an inch.

Hmmm.  As I read this, I have to admit, this “nutrient-rich tea” is sounding pretty good – aren’t all nutrients a great thing?  (That’s what I have always thought – eat your nutrients, and grow up big and strong!)  But something now confuses me – it seems that in the header this ad is indicating whatever follows is really a bad thing….but it isn’t clearly stating that to me right now.  I’m not getting it.  And there is no more copy to this ad – just the website URL.

So what would most people do at this point?  Probably move on with their life and forget it. I, being the diligent Madisonian thirsting for knowledge, decide I want to learn more. I go to the organization’s website.  Low and behold, I find this nugget of info:

Storm water carries excess nutrients like phosphorus with it, which can turn your lakes green and smelly.

Ahhh.  So now I am getting the message that these nutrients really ARE bad.  But why didn’t the ad tell me this and explain this further when I glanced at the paper?  (Maybe call it a “harmful nutrient tea.”)  When looking at an ad, I should “get” it RIGHT away. You don’t want to leave your audience puzzled or confused.  Make it clear what your point is – people have a very very limited attention span. Think 5 to 8 seconds.

I would highly advise an organization like My Fair Lakes that when you are super close to a product or organization, have someone from the outside take a look from time to time to see if you are on target with what you are trying to do.

See if your assumptions hold true – or if they are totally blown out of the water.  Some simple, basic research and feedback when you are trying to get messaging out to your audience can pay off in spades.

I am glad I did see that ad, as in the end I learned something about leafs and lakes.  But next time I hope – for the sake of Madison’s lakes! – that it takes me 5 seconds to fully understand the message instead of 5 minutes of research.

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Filed under: Uncategorized on November 17th, 2010