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Don’t Dump Info. Deliver Meaning.
Every Tuesday, The Productive Disruptive delivers storytelling science, message makeovers, cultural commentary, and a little rebellious hope for anyone still stubborn enough to believe communication can change the world.
Dorian Johnson
January 13, 2026
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Let me call out a gap I see in public health communication all the time:
A lot of us don’t actually send messages.
We send topics.
Hard to tell the difference at first.
Because it looks like effort.
It sounds like responsibility.
But it doesn’t move anybody.
People will say:
“We need to talk about teen mental health.”
“We need to raise awareness about vaping.”
“We need more education on health equity.”
Okay.
But those are topics.
And a topic is just a bucket.
You can fill a bucket with all kinds of things.
Definitions. Stats. Links. Graphs. Resources. Quotes. Key terms.
And it’ll still be a bucket.
A point is different.
A point has direction.
A point has weight.
A point has something at stake.
A point sounds like:
“This isn’t about people making better choices.
It’s about the choices being unevenly available.”
That’s a message.
And this is exactly why good storytelling doesn’t start with a “topic.”
It starts with figuring out what the story is really about before you start crafting anything.
Because if you don’t know the point…
you can’t build the path.
You can only dump content and hope it forms meaning on impact.
And that’s a dangerous strategy when you’re trying to influence real humans with real lives.
Here’s the problem:
A topic can be “important”… and still be unclear.
And when you’re unclear, people don’t feel informed.
They feel like they walked into the middle of a conversation you’ve been having with yourself for three weeks.
🧠 Story Science Side Note: Your audience’s brain isn’t a U-Haul. It’s a carry-on.
When your message tries to pack five separate ideas into one post, people don’t walk away “informed”… they walk away done.
That’s where chunking saves the day: bundling information into a few meaningful “units” so working memory doesn’t get overloaded.
A topic is likely unchuked. A point has been chunked.
📝 Message Makeover:
Before:
“We need to raise awareness about teen mental health.”
After:
Teen mental health is about two things: do their emotions make sense for what they’re carrying, and do they have the tools to handle it. Teens can’t self-regulate their way out of a system that keeps turning the pressure up.
Now we have a point.
Now we have a direction.
Now we can actually design a message that makes sense.
Because awareness isn’t the win.
Change is the win.
And change starts when your audience can feel what you mean.
🛠️ The PHacilitator’s Corner:
Pick something you’ve been wanting to “raise awareness” about.
Now finish this sentence:
“This isn’t really about _______.
It’s about _______.”
That’s it.
That’s your point.
And once you have your point… everything else gets easier.
What to include.
What to cut.
What to lead with.
What to repeat.
What to stop saying because it’s just noise.
Topics are buckets.
Points are blades.
And your audience doesn’t need another bucket.
They need a point that actually pierces through.
Signing off sleepily