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2012 unspools, and you’re already at least ankle-deep in new marketing plans. So with ads and direct mail on your mind, here’s a tip for putting your best foot forward, where it belongs:

Don’t tell them everything at once.

In my time, I’ve known charming people whose lives were rambling, often fascinating narratives of free association. They got a lot said, passing opportunities to stop without even pausing.

“Say, you hear about Tuesdays at Mert’s? You get a free baked potato with your steak. Such a deal! We went last week, and you’ll never guess who we saw: Daschel and Marion. Her niece – married that French fellow? She just had a baby. ‘Belinda Tracy,’ after his cousins. You know, I’ve heard so many are having their babies at home these days. I said this to the girls, and they told me, Mom, they said, it’s a party that way. Well, I suppose if they get married and have babies, I could serve a light lunch. I like a nice orange sherbet. Flint filled half the deep freeze when he got it on sale. But I just can’t climb those basement stairs. My knees. We’re talking about taking the RV up to Mayo to see what they can do. Maybe this spring, before it gets too hot. He’ll have to get off work, and of course he needs those days for Hawaii next Christmas. I tell you his boss’s wife had a major flare-up of diverticulitis, and they neither one came to the office Christmas party? It’s terrible. Also – and this was funny — Flint found an arrowhead in the garden in November. Pulling carrots for Thanksgiving. Isn’t that the funniest thing? He says it’s an arrowhead. It looks like a big ol’ tooth to me. Anyway. You let me know about Mert’s Tuesday. All right?”

When you advertise, don’t tell them everything at once. Your luncheon seminar invitation hardly needs to also explain Life Care, show floor plans, detail your moving assistance program, mention dates for the Open House, announce your website update, provide a slew of resident testimonials, list your services and amenities, and offer a redeemable coupon for doughnuts. Stick to the luncheon seminar: It’s a free lunch and a good talk.

Say one thing. Say it well. And be remembered.

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The day they handed out GlynnDevin’s December “Top 10” blog topics was my day to stir the wassail. So I was outside in the driving snow wielding the stir paddle and didn’t get assigned a Top 10 blog topic. But not to worry. Because today I’m pleased as p – uhh – wassail to present the ’11 Top 10 List of Top 10 Lists.

Top 10 Senior Housing Trends for 2011. See how we did. These appeared last January, predicting how the year would go. Were they accurate?

The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet in the Comments Sections of Year-End Lists. Offering a real slice of humanity, it’s actually got 20 spots, making it twice as good as a regular old top 10 list.

Top 10 Most Common Consumer Complaints. I’d think a senior living community could make good use of the insights revealed here. You might work up a couple of educational luncheon chats for boosting residents’ savvy.

Top 10 Dessert Trends. Another retrospective. But you can see where 2011 was supposed to be headed, dessert-wise, and draw your own conclusions about our success. I give an extra dollop of whipped topping to number 11, because I have spoon-swapping sensitivities. It’s personal, and I don’t want to talk about it.

Best of TED 2011. With 18 to choose from, plan to spend a couple of evenings sifting through the comments of thought leaders. If you’re not already familiar with TED, consider this is your introduction.

Top 10 Senior Characters in Movies. A very nice collection of very nice roles. Get your Netflix on.

Top 10 iPhone Apps for Post50s. Huffington Post has been posting largely useful and often insightful pieces in their Post50s section. Like these iPhone apps.

11 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2011. Offering scads of insight into the human condition, these books range from playful to somewhat stern. I’ve always assumed GD Blog readers are intellectual giants. So I have no qualms about this being anything other than right up your alley.

The 10 Best Novels of 2011. It’s NPR’s perspective on great new fiction – it could be just the thing for loading up that new ereader you got over the holidays.

Top 10 Books Lost to Time. You can’t download these to your Kindle, but thanks to smithsonian.com, you know that you and the rest of humanity are missing out on something presumably very special.

Top 10 Things Readers Loved on thisiscolossal.com in 2011. Don’t know This Is Colossal? Prepare to be amazed. And don’t miss the trailer for “One Day on Earth”.

That’s a total of 11 Top 10s. But then, it’s the holidays, and by golly – you just deserve a little extra.

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Aging poetic? One writer’s observations after attending the first “The Poetics of Aging” annual conference. “‘How stunningly shortsighted, to view aging as decline! Aging allows us to keep writing the poem we call our life.’” Recommended reading.

Know the competition. Neighbor children with shortcake, one-floor living, nose-dived real estate prices, the NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community) – it’s another look inside what’s keeping many seniors at home.

Boomers recall. Increasingly, the ’70s are what seniors call history. A visual tour.

Late success. Can entrepreneurs be successful in both the business and social sectors – later in life? Word is, yes. “We’ve just got to help them ‘shift gears,’ retrain them, and help them apply all their years of experience to something new.”

Changing the game. There’s a new version of Risk. It’s more like life, because even when you start over, where you’ve been and what you’ve done is part of who you are. It’s a classic, updated.

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After their automobile accident, Norma and Gordon Yeager lay dying in intensive care. They held hands, lying side by side, and passed 70 minutes apart. They had been married more than 70 years.

Their tenderness and longevity has at least an equal in the Italian discovery of two 1,500-year-old skeletons. Entombed with hands clasped and positioned to face each other, the couple seem locked in an eternal snuggle, save that the man’s head rolled away from her gaze at some point – due to gravity more than a failure of monogamy.

Both news stories coincidentally surfaced alongside recent in-office discussions about the marketing and branding of senior living, which we do, but which we sometimes pause to reconsider in the interest of keeping our approach focused, sane and useful. Precisely for those reasons, I asked coworker Candice, who’s awfully smart, what she thinks marketing senior living is most like. Retail? Real Estate? Insurance?

Candice: No. No. And no. Choosing a senior living community isn’t like any of those. It’s like choosing who to marry.

Chas: Who’m I to correct your grammar? Please go on.

Candice: Consider the steps. First, you date. You choose somebody in your neighborhood, somebody you work with, a friend of a friend. Or you use a dating service. Whatever. You get up the courage to ask the person out, and if it goes poorly, that’s it for that one. If it goes well, you’ll go on several dates – and maybe you’re dating several people before you focus on just one. But you figure out what the person is really like.

Chas: Dating’s fun. I once dated this nurse who –

Candice: Don’t care. After dating a while, you get into this urgency and commitment thing. You’re wooing, one of you’s hesitant while the other’s more eager, and it can take awhile before you both agree about making a commitment.

Chas: Oooh. Scary.

Candice: You might think so. And the thing is, two people dating can find plenty of roadblocks and plenty of ways to slow everything down. I’m not ready yet … Marriage isn’t for me … I don’t have enough money … I’m too young.

Chas: Or … This will ruin me! … I need my freedom! … I’m a lone wolf and can’t be caged!

Candice: Umm, okay. The point is, when you’re thinking about getting married, you want to make sure you’re compatible because you’re going to spend lots of time together. Why not take your time?

Chas: Because the entrance fees go up in January?

Candice: We’re talking about marriage. You take your time because marriage is a big decision. And then you finally bite the bullet and get married. You don’t want to wait any longer. Time’s running out. And sometimes you find the right one, and you’re partners for life.

Chas: Happily ever after.

Candice: Yes, like that. Or maybe more like you wonder why you waited so long to get married. You realize it’s not so bad. In fact, it’s good. And that’s when you tell your friends they should get married, too.

Chas: Ah-hah! So that’s how choosing a senior living community is like choosing a marriage partner!

Candice: Right. Dating is like getting to know the choices of communities. And then you settle into the process of thinking about it and maybe moving toward commitment – with lots of worries and fact-finding along the way. But when you finally decide, it’s almost always something you feel really good about.

Chas: Got it. Prospects are dating. Leads are going steady. Depositors are betrothed. And hey! I’m craving wedding cake.

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Talkin’ ‘bout a Longevity Revolution. I hear it’s on a par with the Agricultural Revolution, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution and maybe even the Information Revolution. Except with this revolution you don’t get all that expand-the-opportunities, improve-the-quality-of-life, raise-the-standard-of-living stuff you’ve come to expect from a good revolution. You just get swelling numbers of seniors and sweeping changes to the socio-economic landscape.

Good pick. NPR tells a remarkable and beautiful story about a father and son who are evenly matched in vitality, creativity and ambition. Got a few minutes? Watch the videos full screen, volume up.

Wii bowling meets its match. There’s no chance fingerboarding won’t sweep the senior living field.

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