How to Win the Doubtful Reader

There comes a time in every writer’s life when they are asked to commit a lie. Not a big lie. A modest lie. Under pressure, they fudge a marketing survey result so it looks more favorable. 

Seems small. But they’ve just joined the millions of writers fanning the bonfire of public distrust in companies. It is in this fashion that marketers soundly ruined the internet. If you think Google’s AI-generated search responses are inaccurate, try a search-optimized article by a writer with no understanding or experience with the subject at hand.

The result has produced a fetid online swamp of fluff and artifice that people are glad to escape with AI-generated responses. 

But lots of people still check the sources in their AI-summarized results. They want to know who to trust. Authority still matters. If you’re being true and that’s you, send the signals that confirm it.

For example,

Name your authors

Insist on being a named author. It’s a verifiable promise that whatever follows will not be AI slop. Vanishingly few companies feature their authors and I’ve only seen a handful who say why that author is qualified. But you can. 

Pictured, NerdWallet’s bios at the top of an article with a nice “fact-checked” badge and the date it was updated.

Cite your sources, but actually

If you present data, explain where you got it. Most marketing stats are made up, Tami reminds us, in her timeless article “Fake Stats Abound.” If you ever catch yourself citing statistics from 2003 or linking to stat roundups, you are fanning the flames. 

Whereas if you are out there doing real research with real data, you’re hacking back the foul swamp. Pictured, a chart from Pilot’s Founder Salary Report, which Fenwick helped with, which shows the number of respondents on each chart and shares the methodology at the end.

State the truth, even when inconvenient

Sometimes your survey results are not as you’d hoped. That is useful information. A big software client of ours recently asked us to switch the order on a list of results to align with their product and we refused. It would be untrue and harmful. Because let me tell you, the headline “Company that sells software finds that software is people’s number one concern” is a swampfire visible for miles.

There’s still a plenty good story to tell around their number three position—that people’s “top concerns” keep whipsawing, and being an accountant is difficult. Readers know it. Be true.

Admit the limits of your knowledge

Six or so years ago, I asked peers for a designer recommendation and talked to three people. Two badly wanted the work, but the third said, flatly, “Sorry I don’t do websites.” Perhaps the others would have worked out, but this one, I knew I could trust. That was Clarissa, who is now our design director.

I think audiences feel the same. Everyone’s trying to sell them. They’ll listen to the one who says they don’t know, which I do often, and with conviction. It’s honest and people trust it. 

Seek the truth as a way of writing life

What I love above the above recommendations is that they impose a great inconvenience. Naming authors isn’t easy. Citing real sources and conducting real research is time-consuming. But if you make that your bar, then your organization obsesses about reaching it—aka being trustworthy. 

I don’t have a study to back this but I see it all the time: You can achieve far more with far less content if yours is simply more trustworthy.

Which is why we have the Fenwick principle, Truth Seekers. It’s a reminder that we want to pay that inconvenience cost because it is a signal—a beaming light in a fetid, deteriorating swamp.

Fenwick Principle

♟️ Truth Seekers

We place a high value on bypassing artifice and fluff to deliver real stories from real experts. Our insatiable curiosity guides us to ask incisive questions and we’re often rewarded with genuine insights that others may miss. We recognize that true objectivity is impossible and instead we honor the many subjective truths unique people hold.

How to apply today's principle

Request your web team add more prominent author bios at the start of the article that explain the author’s or contributor’s credentials. It raises the bar. It’s a forcing function.

In the next issue

A recap of this first half-year of issues focused on sharing a selection of Fenwick’s 24 principles through story. 

Inside Fenwick

As part of our new website, we’re encouraging negative testimonials if true and fair. Thoughts on this approach?

Worth reading

The A/B testing stages of grief. In the end, you learn something.

The New Control Society. “As we approach the moment when all information everywhere from all time is available to everyone at once, what we find is not new artistic energy, not explosive diversity, but stifling sameness. Everything is converging.”

The Hong Kong I saw last weekend. Flashback. Truly epic reporting.

If you sell something, show it. E.g. if a video agency, have good videos.

Startling brevity and honesty. It isn’t broetry if it’s an actual poem, which this nearly is.

Amazon’s rebrand. The case for minor tweaks. (Clarissa’s find.)

More LinkedIn poetry.

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