We always ask our customers what unique selling point their product has. What can it do better, faster, simpler, cheaper or more efficiently than the competition. But sometimes the answer is, “We don’t really have have one. All the products on the market are pretty much the same.”
I recently came across this quote from Joel Raphaelson about parity products and thought I’d share it:
“In the past, just about every advertiser has assumed that in order to sell his goods he has to convince consumers that his product is superior to his competitor’s.
This may not be necessary. It may be sufficient to convince consumers that your product is postively good. If the consumer feels certain that your product is good and feels uncertain about your competitor’s, he will buy yours.
If you and your competitors all make excellent products, don’t try to imply that yours is better. Just say what’s good about your product - and do it a clearer, more honest, more informative job of saying it.”
Everywhere you turn these days there’s a story about Twitter coming to the rescue of a fire or police department. In less than 140 characters on Twitter, agencies - including the FBI - can post crime and suspect details. So far it’s a huge success, but there are plenty of skeptics. For one, social networking sites such as Twitter aren’t secure and many feel that Twitter can’t be a source of trusted information (there have been incidences of phony police accounts). But the FBI, for example, is using it for updates on missing children, fugitives, job fairs and computer viruses - and won’t accept tips over Twitter.
With a fast growing number of users and the ability to efficiently get quick messages out to computer and mobile users everywhere, questions over Twitter users’ authenticity won’t be the straw that broke this camel’s back.
Something strange seems to be happening. It appears that people no longer know how to use books. Perhaps it’s the rise of the internet that’s caused this worrying trend. Or perhaps kids are no longer taught ‘advanced book use’ in school. Whatever it is, it’s lucky that editors are there to help us out.
So, how do I know about this decline in our book-using ability?
Recently I’ve noticed a tendency for books to include bizarre usage notes. The New Influencers includes a two-page section called How to Use this Book. And I’m happy it does - otherwise I would have had no idea how to use it. I would have ended up doing something stupid, like simply reading it. And The History of Art, published by Star Fire, has a section called How To Read This Book - an essential bit of information in a book that’s mainly pictures.
Really, what’s going on? Have we lost the book skills we once had? Or are editors just trying to be funky?
Next to misplaced apostrophes (traditionally used by greengrocer’s to advertise banana’s), quotation marks are next on the list of punctuation that is thrown in generous handfuls at writing without any real idea why.
Most of the examples on Bethany Keeley’s blog seem to show that writers of posters and signs believe that quotes make their writing stand out - and so it does, but in completely the wrong way. But outside using it to show direct quotes, quotation marks are more correctly used to show ‘nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense’, according to the Chicago Manual of Style.
Which makes it all the funner when they are abused by people offering ‘food’ (what, you mean it isn’t really?). Or, like the picture here, a way out in case of ‘fire’ (no, go on you’re having a laugh).
Bizarre translations are always good fun, especially when they’re incredibly long and random. I just don’t even know where to begin with this one, but it does make me wonder what goes on in your typical Saigon park.
What is it about public speaking that makes so many of us a nervous wreck? Just the thought of it makes some people break out in a cold sweat!
Seeing one of Denmark’s star athletes speak to GHG gymnastics club recently, I was struck by the level of comfort he displayed – and the way he addressed his audience. A 2004 Olympic medal winner in shotput, Joachim B. Olsen is a modest, soft-spoken guy. But, like a true Olympian, he’s also a highly motivated and driven individual. And this is what makes him so engaging.
Joachim’s a really likeable guy, not least because of his relaxed, yet engaged demeanor. At this particular event, his audience was a handful of adults and a group of enthusiastic young gymnasts. He made an effort to engage the kids with casual talk and he didn’t shy away from an armwrestle challenge (from the kids, mind you!). But he really connected with the kids through empathy and confidence.
No-one was engaged by his fancy PowerPoint presentation - because he didn’t have one! Instead, everyone was drawn in by his level of comfort and his obvious passion for his subject matter. He told personal stories about his upbringing and early experiences of athletics, his great sporting passion. His messages were some of the ones parents have been making themselves hoarse over for ages – eating right, working hard and getting sleep – but this time the message may have actually sunk in.
So what can we learn from Joachim? Sure, it might be easy to blame his influence on his role model status. (He really hit the big-time popularity stakes as the winner of Denmark’s “Dancing with the Stars” on TV.) But I suspect there’s a lot more to successfully addressing your audience than just being a champion athlete and public celebrity - although it is a good starting point. Perhaps the key to truly connecting with your listeners is so much about your attitude, passion and level of comfort.
Just the other day I was watching a DVD from Hong Kong. The movie was of the typical Hollywood, English language variety. And it had subtitles. English ones… well, sort of. The words were English, but when strung together they made absolutely no sense. Occasionally you could pick out where the subtitles came together with the actual dialogue, but it took some effort. I couldn’t figure out why the movie didn’t have either Chinese subtitles or the original English ones.
So after reading the nonsensical bits of poetry for a few minutes, I think I figured it out. My hunch is that the movie originally had Chinese subtitles and someone translated these into English, literally. An example – an actor says “Warmongering?!” and the subtitle, believe it or not, reads, “You are warm hungry.” Turns out this already has a name – Engrish, which is basically a bad translation of another language (usually Japanese or Chinese) into English and, sometimes, a bad translation of English into another language followed by a (better) translation back into English.
I’ve even experienced this while watching English programs on Danish television – and those two languages have a lot more in common than English and Chinese! For example, I once read a subtitle that claimed a woman had just broken her window – when she’d just “cracked” it open. Which also begs the questions – do the people who write the subtitles even watch the video or do they just read the transcript? Isn’t context vital in understanding dialogue? And – how much really does get lost in translation?
Here are a few classic translation errors that’ll make you second guess the words at the bottom of your screen, or in your hotel lobby:
“Bite the wax tadpole.” – the original translation of Coca-Cola into Chinese.
“Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.” – the “Pepsi Comes Alive” slogan translated into Chinese
“You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.” – a Japanese hotel’s guest directory from 1991
“It takes a virile man to make a chicken pregnant.” – a mistranslated Perdue chicken ad
(If you’re really having trouble answering that question, I can tell you he was not. He was a composer.)
In today’s world, it seems that unless you offer solutions then you’re a nobody. But for me, ‘solutions’ is just a most common example of lazy writing. It doesn’t actually tell you anything – and good writing should tell you all you need to know.
Eye for Image is not a provider of communications solutions. We write. And we give strategic advice. And we coach your communications team. We do all those things. And saying we offer ‘communications solutions’ sells us, and the reader, short.
Another thing with solutions: it comes from solve. And you solve problems. So if we offer solutions – and you want them – then you must have problems. But that isn’t always the case. Sometimes people just want something written. Or they want strategic advice. Or they want to be coached.
English has thousands of words. More than 500,000 according to Chambers 21st Century Dictionary. So surely we can find the right one for every situation. But all too often, we look for an adjective or adverb instead - and the result is heavier, wordier, less precise text.
This is explained concisely by Andy Maslen in his book Write to Sell:
“Unless they provide extra information, adjectives and adverbs are just a lazy writer’s excuse for not thinking harder. Here’s how to use more precise words instead:
Not a huge house, but a mansion
Not a forward-looking executive but a pioneer
Not a respected company but a standard-setter
It works for adverbs to:
At least not according to Apple. And now a study, run by the Future Laboratory and Nokia, is inclined to agree. As the devices in our hands become more powerful, it’s the impact they have on our life experience that sells them, not how many Giga hertz or Mega pixels they boast.
G is not for Geek
The new approach to marketing is called ‘G-tech’ - short for ‘girl tech’. Though not 100% politically correct at first glance, G-tech is really just about designing and writing about products in a way that appeals to the right side of the brain. That means moving away from literal and logical messages about the way gadgets work and emphasising their empathic and intuitive qualities - how you experience a product, and how it can enrich your life.
What boys and girls want
It’s worked wonders for Apple - the iPod is the archetypical G-tech product. And now other manufacturers are following suit. At Eye For Image we’re finding more and more of our clients are responding very positively to our ‘demystify the tech’ approach. At first they were worried about talking down to (geeky) customers. But now they realise that the boys like the right brain approach just as much.
After all, boys, as well as girls, just want to have fun.
Here’s a short video in which the boys talk about G-tech (in quite a geeky way!). Most of the meat is in the last minute and a half.
