The one thing that all the briefs we work on share is that they want to influence behaviour, or even change it outright. It’s therefore no surprise that the marketing profession has become obsessed with behavioural science over the past couple of decades. But there are two aspects to this that are far too easy to overlook:

a)    Most potential behaviour change requires some reading.
b)    Reading is a behaviour in its own right.

We’ve made it our business to watch and learn about the act of reading far more closely. And to cut a long story short, it turns out that the same principles that govern other forms of decision making, hold true for reading too. For marketing copy to be worth reading, people need it to be:

•    Trustworthy
•    Easy
•    Short

As a brand owner, you no doubt also want your writing to be memorable and communicate your brand values through tone of voice. For a reader, that is entirely optional, and only if you get the trustworthy, easy, short bit right will they tolerate your tonal values. Because remember this: readers don’t read until you’ve finished, they read until they’ve finished. Which is always before the end.