Between 4 particular emails last week, I counted 9 different fonts, 6 different colors, and images totalling over 5MB. They were all either butchered rich-text or MS-HTML. Topping the charts was a 3MB bitmap screenshot of an IE window displaying a 40K JPEG.

It seems that people put no thought into what they communicate. And, if they do, it’s put all in the wrong place. Surely thinking about what you say is not an unreasonable thing to do. It should at least take precedence over how well gift-wrapped your bullshit is.

Fonts, colors, flash, all the bullshit — for what? If you had meaningful content, and people had a real reason to listen to you, they would. The most powerful messages speak for themselves. The most powerful tools are simple. Google is a good example of how little all of the marketing noise is compared to the quality of a tool.

Tell you what – think a minute longer about what you write and send out to hundreds of people. Reduce it, simplify it, and say something meaningful. People will listen, they may even respond. But don’t ever substitute colors or shitty images for meaning.

All the flash, images and techo fonts in the world can’t make up for shitty content.