One Red Hot Country Mama!

One thing I advise to my clients in my web marketing practice is that labels are important. The right name on a newsletter can increase open-rate by 300%, and the right name on a link can increase clicks and even conversions significantly. There are all kinds of tricks of the trade – using numbers helps for example, as do brand names and action words.

Labels are on an HTML page what a book cover is to a book. Or… a the face, hair, curves and abs on a person. But, most of us have figured out that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, or a person by their outside (especially with the unrealistic impressions brought to us by plastic surgery ).

In Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason  he discusses that the public is becoming increasingly ignorant, and relying on shallow things such as labels instead of a deep and reasoned understanding of the issues involved:

Bush would not be able credibly to label a bill that increases air pollution "the clear skies initiative" – or call a bill that increases clear-cutting of national forests "the healthy forests initiative" – unless he was confident that the public was never going to know what these bills actually did.

I found it astonishing that the pattern people exhibit while web surfing and channel changing has leaked into political life.

Maybe the issues are getting more complex, or maybe people are tuning out of current affairs… but I think that the responsibility of elucidating issues to the public lies at the feet of the media. Are they up for it? With the labels that so many people have for the media today (uncurious and order-takers from the major news agencies for example) – maybe not.

From page 79 of this edition.