This was a concern for a client of mine recently regarding a radio ad. The company is from the southern United States and he believed that in a 30 second ad you should not have that many words.
I questioned him on his premise. My question is based on research done by Richard Lee and Delmar Hatesohl of the University of Missouri. They have come to the conclusion that thought speed is greater than speaking speed. Now considering that people in the southern U.S. are known for speaking slower this seems to go against the norm.
There is a reason for poor listening skills. It is that you can think faster than someone can speak. Most of us speak at the speed of about 125 words per minute. However, we have the mental ability to understand someone speaking at 400 words per minute (if that were doable).
This difference between our speaking speed and our listeners thought speed means that when we listen to the average speaker, we're using only 25 percent of our mental ability. We still have 75 percent of our mental ability to do something else with our thoughts. So, our minds will wander. This means people need to make a real effort to listen carefully and concentrate. If they don’t, you soon find that their minds have turned to other ideas.
So my question to you is; do you want people really attentive to what you are communicating or do you want their minds wandering?
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