Last time, we talked about how a failure to understand an audience's needs and desires can result in useless communication. This time, we'll address a more general point. Academic marketing is often too subtle. Academic marketing might be able to understand broad, general themes. This is what it uses to get into US News & World Report and to extract donations from alumni. This is a very large audience. And any communication to this audience has to be general. General communication cannot be personal. And since it can't be personal, it can't address the true needs and concerns of the audience. Thus, general communication is necessarily indirect. Indirect communication is not compelling or efficient. Because the communication is indirect, either you ask the audience to take some general action, which likely doesn't apply to them. Or, you ask the audience to figure out which action to take. Either way, the audience immediately feels the impersonal nature of the communication. The better approach is to follow the first two rules: audience and motivation. When combined, this leads to a clear understanding of precisely what needs to be communicated. And this leads to directness. Directness is good because it's much more likely to produce action. Think about a central feature of CPR training. When you need someone to call 911, you don't say 'Someone call 911!'. Instead, you point at someone (anyone), and say 'YOU call 911!'. Direct communication that speaks to that person is much more likely to produce results.