Back in the prehistoric era when I was a kid, weather reports came from a weather desk on the local TV station. And the meteorologist reported about upcoming precipitation.
Now the report happens at “Storm Center” where a personality rants about snow-maggedon or the blockbuster blizzard barreling down on your community.
They’ve even resorted to giving storms intimidating names like winter storm Juno, named after a vindictive Greek goddess. While rattling off terms like bomb-cyclones and nor’easters. Slapping adjectives like massive, colossal, and historic in front of them.
Bomb cyclone is just an intimidating word for a rapidly forming storm and they’re quite common. And you guessed it a nor’easter is just a storm headed up the northeast.
Snow fall used to be referred to as an accumulation. Now your city is “getting walloped” by a “crippling blizzard”.
The media have become the grown adults who cry wolf.
We live in the hot take and page views era but that doesn’t mean you need to pander to people’s fears too.
Why am I ranting about this? Because here in Maine we just had Snowmaggedon 2019 or as sane people call it a day of winter. In other words, it snowed on and off for 18 hours and we got about 10 inches. No one was crippled or walloped.
There’s nothing remarkable about that, it’s February in the northeast. It’s the most normal thing this time of year and newsflash… it happens every year.
Don’t buy into the media hype. All it does is drive people to the grocery store to stock up on milk, eggs and bread. (Apparently French toast is the official sponsor of Storm Center)
What’s this have to do with you? Everything.
Hype, hysteria and hyperbole rule the day not just in media but in many industries. Businesses clamoring for attention take everything to extremes and try to make the normal seem remarkable. Doing so has its consequences. When you make everything remarkable, nothing is remarkable.
Consequently your trust is eroded and your brand integrity suffers. Don’t be “that guy” or “that girl”. You’re better than that.
Just because good forecasting has taken a backseat to high ratings doesn’t mean you have to follow their example.
I deliberately don’t overhype anything I do. You won’t find me using scare tactics to sell or overdramatizing my audience’s problems to pander to their fears. I actually gone out of my way to do quite the opposite.
My book Stadium Status is the anti-thesis of that. Readers have referred to as “principled with a no nonsense message”, “unpretentious, easily relatable” and “it just makes good sense”.
It’s on sale for $12.97 and ships immediately. A case of them even got delivered to readers today in the midst of Snowmaggedon. Get it here, or don’t (it makes no difference to me)…
https://coachbru.com/product/stadium-status-taking-business-big-time/