Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Jim,

Actually it depends more on the length of the buying cycle than anything else. Example: If you're a moving company and you're targeting people who you know have just sold their house, you want a TON of information in that piece. However, if you're targeting new home buyers, now, for winter snowblowers you should go with something quite a bit shorter.

Hope that helps a little.

Michael

The answer to your question depends on the target audience and product category. Sure, shorter is usually better, but not all the time or for every product/market.

The one thing that IS constant is that people read headlines, remember pictures, and glance at captions and sub-heads. Body copy is last on the list. That doesn't mean you can ignore it, but it does mean that you better make the headline a grabber and the visuals worth remembering. And if it's longer than a paragraph or two, consider some sub-heads that capture the essence of the following paragraphs.