What’s a Schema?

Our job, at the end of the day, is to put new ideas into the heads of our visitors.

Seems clear. But getting new ideas in there takes energy. And, like in the movie Inception, sometimes it doesn’t work.

What if we could use the ideas already inside those heads? These are called schemas.

The idea is to build new ideas out of existing ones. Here’s a famous example:

An idea like “climate change” is an abstraction. It would get more attention if we built it out of concrete older ones — i.e., schemas — like “atmosphere cancer” or “pollution death”, as marketer Seth Godin once proposed.

More effective, no?

Try it. What’s a schema-based way to say: 

Fungi are vital ecosystem contributors for decomposition.

The X6 Mini satellite is only 36 in. x 35 in. x 72 in.

The Making the Museum word count is 160-185.

Here’s the thing:
New ideas are hard to communicate. It’s easier when you build them out of schemas: old ideas already in your audience’s heads.

Warmly,
Jonathan

P.S. Could be: “Fungi, nature’s recyclers”, “The X6 is the size of a refrigerator”, and “You can read MtM in less than a minute”.