This is the headline.

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?? by Murray Joslin

You’re exposed to hundreds of headlines daily.

Every time you leave the house, you are peppered with quips, slogans, puns, catchphrases and imperatives. That’s because the headline is alive and well in marketing, and advertisers know it as the best way of getting your attention.

During a recent marketing forum discussion, CMO’s and creative leads at firms in investment banking, asset management and consulting agreed that the time-honored header remains likely the most important single element of their respective content efforts.

A seasoned head of marketing at an investment bank, put it this way: “If a headline can’t be easily developed after reviewing shortform, longform or digital ad content, the content is probably not worth it – it’s not compelling enough.”

Provided you do have something exciting to showcase, the headline carries the most weight. It is the ‘front door’ to your content or solution offering, the entry to the point of view that you want to communicate. Headlines create interest and intrigue into your message, inviting one to ‘step inside’ and discover what is being communicated.

Naturally, creating a strong headline isn’t always an easy task. Minimalist advertising has reigned supreme in marketing across industries for decades, and there is a lot of pressure to get slogans right.?Time pressures often mean we need to condense sizeable concepts into brief and digestible statements. Think of how you interact with your colleagues, clients, consultants and business peers. How do you communicate your most important ideas and avoid getting tangled up in unnecessary detail? How do you make sure someone gets the message and remembers it? And how do you adjust your speech for different listeners?

Examining these organic, unplanned forms of communication can provide clues to developing a ‘portable point of view’ for your headlines – vivid and engaging statements.

? Torturing into Greatness

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, one of the world’s most successful companies, during a recent interview, tongue firmly in cheek, said “I don’t like giving up on people,” Huang said. “I’d rather torture them into greatness.”

Huang sat down for a Stripe Sessions chat last May during which he discussed various aspects of his business philosophy. Asked about his reluctance to fire people, Huang said he prefers to motivate staff into success rather than let them go after a setback or two.

Now, Huang of course did not mean literally torture, but he shared his views on challenging leaders, even sometimes among peers, to fight through adversity to achieve greatness.?The opportunity to learn and grow, Huang noted, is invaluable. He pointed out that he used to clean bathrooms and has since become the boss of a computing powerhouse valued at over $3 trillion.

He shared with his team, “I’m pretty sure you can learn this,” providing encouragement to utilize resources to find solutions and stretch skill sets.

Huang added that he sees greatness as something that can happen in a flash – a sudden, brilliant idea can change everything.

“Oftentimes [people] are so close; greatness comes all of a sudden. You didn’t get it yesterday, but then something clicked and it’s like, “Oh.” Could you imagine if you gave up at the moment just before you got it?”

Achieving greatness is close, maybe we don’t know how close until we can push a bit further.

Perhaps the push to greatness takes the form of a grueling-but-necessary process change like finding a different resource partner, using an external party to scale delivery or stepping back from a design that’s not working to see it from a new perspective.

As a trusted partner to many of today’s dynamic and forward-thinking organizations, Integreon has first-hand experience in helping clients to recognize and take full advantage of their best ideas. Clients look to Integreon for help streamlining communications, research and design - creating impactful content and materials for both internal and external consumption. You can learn more about Integreon’s work here.

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