RICHTEXT

This poster was a great excuse to try my new mobile blogging software. I came across it at the Montparnasse train station this morning.

“All our staff is at our disposal and will assist you in your whereabouts wherever you are in this station including the staff of the way-finding desk (near the end of platform 17)”

I was literally stopped in my tracks by the English. I couldn’t help wondering how an English-speaking traveler would react, once they stopped giggling.

The translation is uniquely bad. (I’m not going to start listing everything that’s wrong with it). What struck me the most was how it tries to say more than the original French does while introducing lots of new confusions (it’s along way to the end of platform 17, which you can’t actually access without a commuter ticket). It’s as if the writer was going out his or her way to be extra nice to foreigners but hadn’t ever actually tried to help a hapless voyager.

You clearly get the idea that a decision has been made high up to rectify the quality of traveller assistance (smells like a survey result to me), but you can’t help wondering if the writing skills are a taste of the language skills to be found in the mysterious “way-finding” desk.

And God forbid you’re a non-native English speaker. It must sound even more confusing, while the obsequiousness probably flies over your head.

Ironically, I was on my way to a meeting to discuss the challenges of writing content for a 3-language website.

Lately I’ve giving a lot of thought to the role of writing in experience design.

It started with an article in the NYT that led to an article in the HBR by Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and a leading thinker in the Design Thinking movement. I then tracked down the author’s blog. It was this post that really caught my eye.

At the end of the first paragraph he asks himself if the cup is a “great product or a great experience.” The question hit a nerve with me.

Does the copy that I write contribute to the experience of the product/company/service/brand being marketed or is it simply part of the way the user experiences the marketing, whether it’s a web site or printed collateral?

I’ll bet most clients think the answer is the latter. But I’m increasingly convinced that it’s the former. In fact, I think the line separating products from their marketing is quickly dissolving. I’d even go so far as to say that the quality of the marketing is an integral feature of the product experience. In fact, marketing is many people’s first experience with the product.

Experience design should, therefore, be extended to include marketing — and the quality of the copy.

Even before it became mainstream, conversation marketing may be on the wane. For the past couple years, “the conversation” has become one of the hottest concepts in marketing — a way of helping companies embrace social media as a platform for promoting their brand, product or service. But apparently it’s almost old hat already. Some leading thinkers are even talking about “beyond the conversation.”

Stop talking

But before we kill of the conversation and move on to something better, I’d like to make a plea for “zero conversation.” Don’t get me wrong; I’m the first to tell my clients that they need to engage with customers. But engagement isn’t limited to conversation.

One commonly overlooked kind of engagement are transactions. I consider a transaction to be when one party put something in and the other takes something out. There are different kinds of transactions: window shopping, information gathering, answering questions, providing advice and, of course, the actual sale. They are the fundamental contact points between the customer and the company. Put end to end, and done properly, they can lead to a conversation, which is the holy grail: an ongoing, mutually nourishing transaction.

Some businesses, however, are so focused on getting to the conversation, that they forget the importance of transactions.

Conversation vs. Transaction

Compare two transactions for the same product that I completed recently.

I needed some camera gear, which I ordered on a Thursday afternoon on the web. It arrived Friday morning. No follow up email. No invitation to read their blog ( they don’t have one). But that’s ok. What they didn’t know was that I was in a hurry, and they came through for me.

Turns out I needed a second set of the exact same gear three days later. This time I was in town, so I stopped by my favorite camera store. I explained what I needed. We talked, discussed the pros and cons. He took my number, called his distributor, placed the order and called me back to tell me that it would be there Wednesday. But it wasn’t. I made a special trip to pick up the order, but not all the items were available. I missed my deadline. Despite the free advice, useful content, pleasing conversation and human warmth, they flubbed the transaction.

The next time I need gear, where do you think I’m going to go?

Lessons to remember

1. Conversations are a two-way street, requiring an effort from both parties. Sometimes I’m game for one, sometimes I just want to get in an out. So pick the right time to have the conversation. A conversation at the wrong moment can come across as boorish, like the guy on the plane who is bent on talking to you when all you ant to do is sleep.
2. Conversations raise expectations. If the transaction is substandard, the conversation can come across as a waste of time or worse, insincere. The customer may end up resenting having put in the effort.

We’ve all been there, right? How not to design a stop sign.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the value of creativity versus clarity. Let me explain.

Many a brief starts with a request for a creative solution to a communications problem, which is often a lack of interest in what the client is selling. It’s not appealing enough, everyone says. What we need is a concept capable of grabbing the target’s attention. We need to talk louder.

But when I start digging into what needs communicating, I often discover confusion. The offering, whether a product or a service, is inelegant, befuddling, underwhelming or all three. It’s full of asterisks, caveats and conditional language. It’s neither clear nor compelling. It needs to be said more clearly.

The problem arises when I try to get the concept to jive with the content. Often the concept, no matter how strong it is, it ends up being a cache-misère because the offering isn’t up to par with the creative.

I know where the problem comes from: everyone prefers to spend time being part of the next great concept rather than knuckling down on defining a clear and compelling offer. It’s the difference between dining out and working out, between spending and saving. One is fun, the other is tedious.

But the effort can be well worth it. So increasingly I’ve been making this plea: the next time you decide to revamp your communications, think about investing in some clarity too. Focus on getting the simple stuff right. Get rid of the lazy language and cut-and-paste verbiage left over from previous product teams. Iron out the incoherences. Tidy up the loose ends. Your offer will be leaner and stronger, which in turn will make the creative stronger.

Once I’ve established a tone and voice for a client in new marketing materials and collateral, it’s time to bring existing documents in line with the new writing style. So I’m often asked to rewrite documents drafted in English by non-English speakers, mainly French ones.

It’s easy to spot copy that’s been written in English, but conceived in French. You can tell by the length of the sentences. The fact that on a French keyboard you have to use the shift key to put a period at the end of a sentence (while commas, semi colons and colons are all lower case) is telling.

So when a client asks me how to  write more concisely in English, the first thing I tell them is shorten clauses to phrases and phrases to single words. Here are some examples:

BEFORE: Company X, which was founded in 1995, is a leader in the field of mobile technology.
AFTER: Founded in 1995, Company X is a leader in mobile technology.

BEFORE: The function of the technology X is to improve the speed of production.
AFTER: Technology X improves production speed.

My second tip is avoid expletives, and I don’t mean swear words. I run into these a lot because they are commonly used in French ( C’est ,il y a). Avoid using them in English. They rob a sentence of its impact:

BEFORE: There are 40 employees in the company.
AFTER: The company has 40 employees.

BEFORE: It is the function of the tool to detect errors .
AFTER: The tool detects errors.

There are many other ways to write lean copy in English. More to come in the future.

I came across this webinar recently. At about 11 minutes and 30 seconds into it he starts talking about how companies need to “think of yourself as half publisher and half traditional marketer.” He goes on to say: “When you’re thinking of your next marketing hire…hire a professional writer or contract out to a professional writer.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

4 Frameworks For Re-Thinking Your Marketing Strategy

from the Hubspot Blog

I’ve been a (so far) loyal International Herald Tribune subscriber since I moved to France all those years ago. It’s one of only two snail-mail subscriptions that I’ve kept. I’ve always been a big newspaper reader because of the ritual (my emphasis). I also like the format, and for the most part, I love the content.

Explain what you’re doing

A couple months ago IHT changed delivery companies. I knew right away because the paper started being delivered in an eco-unfriendly plastic baggy rather than being held together by a recyclable paper ring. Almost immediately the trusty daily delivery started to falter. One day I’d get no paper, the next I’d get two days’ worth. The ritual was interrupted. The IHT also changed their layout a while ago. They explained why they did it and what the improvements were in a short article. They did not explain the change to the delivery process.

Remember, service providers are part of the brand experience

So I called the subscription hotline. I could have sent them an email, but I thought calling would be faster. The phone menu asked me to enter my subscription number, but I didn’t know where to find it. So I waited for an operator — who asked me for my subscription number over a noisy line from a foreign country. Turns out that the subscription number it’s not printed on the plastic baggy. We finally figured who I was using my address. IHT spent a lot of time and money on that new, easier to read layout, but why not on the phone menu?

Tear up the script

I told the service rep that I was filing a complaint. I told him that I was seriously considering canceling my subscription if service didn’t improve. He offered me a credit. I told him I didn’t want a credit, I wanted daily delivery. And if they couldn’t do it, I’d just cancel and read the IHT online, which technically would be even cheaper than any credit he could offer me.

Then he thanked me for my call and told me to that he would file a complaint on my behalf. At this point I had spent 5 minutes too long on the phone, so I didn’t have the energy to tell him that I could have filed it myself, had the new online account management site been launched in the spring of 2008, as was promised on the IHT’s site (and still is).

Takeaways

• Don’t degrade your brand experience
• User experience is more than just a software issue
• Don’t underestimate the importance of ritual
• Don’t overestimate the keeping power of your content
• Give customer service the power to fix things

I have found that many companies just aren’t ready for social media, web 2.0, conversation marketing and all those other buzzwords that are flying around the world of marketing and advertising.

It’s not because they don’t want to. It’s not because they don’t understand it or are against it. The reasons are simple and interconnected. Over the next couple posts I’m going to talk about some of the reasons I’ve spotted.

Reason 1. Dazzled by fireworks
Many marketing departments operate in what I call a fireworks model. Even if the company is selling a service, chances are it still thinks in terms of roadmaps and timetables that inevitably culminate in a launch, an event or a kick-off. It mirrors a corporate rhythm based on product development cycles — a vestige of an industrial-era business model.

But customers aren’t waiting around for you to launch your product. They don’t really care. Odds are that they already own the functional equivalent of what you are selling. They don’t need it. What you’re asking them to do is replace what they’ve got with what you have to offer. That’s inconvenient.

Sure, they like it when you tell them about something new that is relevant to where they are at that moment. But the newness may have nothing to do with the fireworks; it may just be new to them because they happened to be listening when you were talking.

One very effective way to get around this problem is to move from a fireworks model to a publication model in which marketing is incremental, a steady stream of messages and content that starts at the launch and lasts as long as the product does. It’s not really a problem if the customer misses your launch, because when they’re ready to buy, they will (theoretically) be attracted to what you’re saying, find it convincing and head cheerfully down the dreaded sales funnel.

The problem is that market departments are rarely organized or scaled to communicate about a current product and prepare the marketing for a new product at the same time. Getting ready for the launch eats up the available resources. Marketing about the previous product is put on the back burner. The communications become stale. Anyway, working on the launch is more fun, more motivating, right?

So what comes after the fireworks and the publication model? I call it “marketing as a service.” As a quick Google search painfully showed me, I am apparently not the first person to come up with the idea of turning creative ideas into tangible services (instead of one-shot fireworks). But more on that in another post.

I stumbled across this article entitled The Cure for Content-Delay Syndrome on A List Apart while waiting for a conference call to start this morning. It couldn’t have come at a better time. The call was about a web project, and I couldn’t help thinking how spot on the writer was.

Over the years I’ve become more and more uncomfortable with the “copywriter” name tag. It’s an awkward tag to wear because it’s too small and doesn’t fit very well. Take this morning’s call as a case in point. I will eventually end up writing the copy and content for the website in question. But everything we talked about this morning had to do with editorial decisions, not writing.

I felt very much like an editor planning the next edition of a publication. Organizing the front page. Sorting my way through the existing content, deciding what’s worth keeping and what isn’t — and what needs translating. Identifying what needs rewriting, what can be used as is. Providing input on the style and choice of photos to be used. Gently trying to persuade the client as to what is worthy of a place on the home page and what isn’t. Trying to prevent stakeholder politics from getting the way of effective communications. All the things that editors find themselves confronted with on a daily basis, or so I imagine.

In the article, Pepi Ronalds writes: “…we tend to first think ‘copywriter’ when trying to get our content sorted, whereas very often an editor is the person we should be engaging.”

That’s when it struck me. I often feel like an editor because I am an editor — in addition to being a writer. So now I’ve gotten myself a bigger name tag — writer/editor — and it fits me very well.