I read a bunch of different blogs each day. One of those is by a marketing genius named Seth Godin. Today he had a post about the dumbing down of America. So many marketers, advertisers and service providers assume their clients/customers/consumers are just not that bright.

We see it in the news. I mean really IN the news. Newspapers are written for people with an eighth grade education. TV newscasts aren’t much better. I think they assume that viewers have the attention span of guppies. If they cover a story on the six o’clock news on Tuesday, if there is an update on Wednesday they have to repeat the entire story (even if it is a story that one would have to hide under a rock not to be aware of). And, in some cases it is worse…

A few years ago, during a multi-day event that had traffic tied up for a few days, one reporter flying in a traffic copter over a crowded Interstate actually said, “the red lights are the cars going away from us, and the white lights are the cars coming towards us.” Wow… the insight is amazing, no?

Seth’s point, and one that I totally agree with, is that if we look for dumb consumers we will find dumb consumers. After all, what should one expect if they put out a message trolling for an eighth grade education?

So, here we are…

I don’t want clients with an eighth grade education. I want clients that are a cut above. I may write a post to explain how something works, but that isn’t because I think I need to dumb it down. A good example, from the other side, is that I am building my website and blog. I don’t consider myself to be below intelligence, but I don’t spend all of my time designing websites. I need to learn a lot of the basics that people that build websites every day take for granted. I deal with real estate every day. I don’t assume that my clients do… but I assume that they can understand what I throw at them.

So, here’s to the better than average client. You know who you are. And I am so glad i don’t have to write content for eighth graders…