Zoë Scorer, Managing Director:

There’s a pattern we see play out again and again with our clients; those that know their field best are often the ones that find it hardest to talk about it clearly.

The curse of knowing too much

There’s a name for this in psychology: the curse of knowledge, a term coined by economist Robin Hogarth in 1975. Indeed, experts are often worse communicators about their own subject than non-experts are. Studies of scientific communication have found that jargon does more than slow readers down. The effort of decoding unfamiliar terms can actively increase resistance to the ideas being communicated, because the brain reads that extra effort as a sign that the underlying claim itself is suspect.

We see the same pattern across every sector we work in. A green energy company buries the “so what” of a new innovative technology under methodology. A property developer talks fluently about massing and embodied carbon, but doesn’t inform the person who just wants to know what the building will actually do for their community. A charity focuses on “beneficiaries” and “theory of change” when a donor simply wants to know who was helped, and how. A school describes its curriculum in terms that mean nothing to a parent trying to work out if it’s the right fit for their child. The very thing that earns an organisation credibility can also be what confuses everyone else.

Why this matters more now

This has always been a challenge. What’s changed is the cost of getting it wrong. Attention is harder to hold than it used to be, and people have less patience for working out what an organisation actually does. If they can’t grasp the value on offer in the time it takes to scroll past it, a competitor with a simpler explanation will win the moment, even if their underlying offer is weaker.

Clarity is now a genuine competitive advantage. That’s especially true here in Cambridge, where the concentration of world-class expertise means being good at what you do isn’t enough on its own; you also need to be understood. By way of illustration, Ipsos’s latest Public Attitudes to Science survey found that the share of the UK public who feel informed about science has fallen, from 51% in 2019 to 43% in 2025, despite people having more access to information than at any point before.

Why it’s hard to fix from the inside

Organisations we work with want to build relationships with their audiences and translate complex messaging into clear and relatable stories that build credibility and connection. But, very few manage it on their own. Part of the problem is proximity: terms that feel plain to a team who are experts in their subject sound opaque to everyone else.

This is because simplicity feels risky so technical jargon creeps back in and clarity ends up traded for a level of detail that is hard for their audiences to digest. And a reason for this is that the job of translation doesn’t really belong to anyone. Technical accuracy has an obvious owner, whether that’s the science lead or the project owner, but turning that accuracy into something a non-specialist audience will actually understand takes a different skill again, one that most organisations haven’t built in-house.

Making every message matter

The quieter weeks before September’s pace returns give organisations a real chance to step back and ask a harder question: does our core message land with someone outside our field, on the first read? For most organisations, the honest answer is not quite, and that’s rarely for lack of trying. It’s what happens when deep expertise hasn’t been deliberately translated for the people who need to act on it. 

If you recognise your organisation in any of this, it’s worth using the next few weeks well. We’d be glad to help you find out what your communications sound like to someone who doesn’t already know what you know.