In my last post, I talked about the ways Language shapes our perception of the very things we use Language to express. The impact of this paradox on our conversation with consumers is little understood. That's because so much of what we produce is the result of habitual, mechanical practice and unexamined marketing theory.
Am I being too harsh? Maybe. But I don't know how else to account for what I encountered on 1-10-12 at Honda.com. Here, in the slide show marquee, is Car Copy Gone Wild:
• We're all different. That's why there are 5 Honda Civics
• All New Cry. Inspiration is Calling
• Million Mile Joe Did It!
• Right Size Meets Right Time.
• 2012 Honda Goldwing. Prepare to go everywhere!
• The next Honda in your life
• 2012 Honda Pilot. The SUV made better
• Honda's "Sweet Dreams" kicks off the Rose Parade
• Honda Has More 2011 JD Power and Associates
Initial Quality Awards Than Any Other Automaker
• The Fit Is GO!
• Do you possess dreams or to they possess you
• The undying dream
• A Commuter's Dream
• Refinement to the next power
• We've been an engine of growth for the US economy for over 40 years.
Imagine, 15 different message strategies, each conveyed with a different visual style, rhythm, pacing and voice—yet supposedly the outward expression of a unified brand. As I see it, the seductive impact of labels on perception has blindsided Honda. Far from being branded communication, this is the very exemplar of Web Site Copy, that bland, inhuman style of communication that slides closer to the standards set by the supermarket circular every year.
Face it, anyone who spoke this way to a friend or lover in the real world would be considered a sociopath. It's a communication style we might call "Just Keep Talking—Until You Strike a Nerve or Your Prey Cracks From Nervous Exhaustion."
Of course communicating humanely is easier face-to-face than through any advertising medium, but that's no excuse for allowing the medium to interpose itself between a brand and its audience. "Look at me, I'm a marketing platform," squeals the marquee at Honda.com—as at Xerox.com, Boarshead.com and countless other sites. In the rush to follow form and produce Web Site Copy that meets Professional Standards, real communication is lost.
"Isn't there a better way?"
My answer is a qualified "Yes." Not coincidentally, the solutions I find at MMS.com involve more than a different approach to copy. While the text is much less "websitey" than average, the real impact lies in the way the message unfolds. Instead of confronting a visitor with a wall of unrelated copy snippets, the site creates context, a framework for communication.
Like an engaging sales rep, it appeals to you as a rounded, unified entity. Also notice that this site, though built from the same visual/verbal vocabulary as the offline M&Ms campaign, has reinterpreted that vocabulary for a different medium. Then, page by page, it unfolds different aspects of its message at a human pace—without the drumbeat redundancy of traditional marketing speak.
Now, lest you think this approach won't work in a campaign for a high value product marketed to discriminating customers, have a look at two examples. The first is the recent general campaign for The Cosmopolitan Resort Hotel under the banner "Just the Right Amount of Wrong." I defy anyone to say a swatch of traditional Hotel Copy extolling "the finest accommodations for the luxury experience you deserve," could have such an immediate impact.
At a less sensational level, see the House of Travel Make Your Own Policy Tool. Not as much fun, but just as engaging, in one important sense: Here's a page that delivers far more than mere words or images can convey about what the company offers.
Fail to grasp the implications here and you're doomed to produce another wordy Web presence that paradoxically says nothing at all. Because the ultimate folly of label-based communication is its focus on words. Real communication doesn't depend on individual words or phrases but on the background message that emerges from its surrounding context—a combination of word, image and sound, real or implied.
This background message and the value it delivers is the true definition of branding. No amount of clever words or design gimmickry can motivate consumers if it doesn't add up to a meaningful emotional connection, as conveyed in a unifying message. Forget this point and your destined to become just another sad puppet of Language and its labels.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Consumer Messaging
& the Tyranny of Labels (1)
One of the most important aspects of Language is the way it shapes our perceptions. A perfect example is the experience I had at a dinner party, a few years back. The main course was delicious—until I learned what was in it. Once the words “pigs' knuckles” entered my brain, I lost my appetite and much else besides.
That's just one of the ways the labels we attach to things can affect our experience. In this sense, Language not only conveys information, it is information.
Take the label "copywriter." Over the last 50 years, as American marketing, like American society, has become more literal-minded, the meaning of "copywriter" has become increasingly limited. In 2012, your garden-variety marketing wonk defines "copywriter" as a technician who writes to order.
And due to the splintering effects of literalism on workflow, that order now frequently comes from a highly specialized "strategist." According to common lore, copywriters only exist to realize a strategist's strategies. They do so by pumping pre-approved PowerPoint slides full of category-appropriate stock phrases—kind of like a building contractor insulating your attic.
According to one school of thought, this analogy is entirely apt. It positions writing as a mechanical process, a skill anyone could learn if they didn't have loftier things to attend to.
Step away from the whiteboard.
It's easy to see why. As America's descent into literalism continues—as evidenced by this season’s GOP debates—even people who should know better think in terms of "Pharmaceutical Copy," "Real Estate Copy," "Financial Copy," "Insurance Copy." That they also posit the existence of "Mommy Marketing Copy," "Hispanic Marketing Copy," and "Alternative Lifestyle Copy" is just this side of bigotry.
Yet this is what Language does to thought and perception if you let it. Ironically, as the premier label-makers of American society, the advertising industry is the one most thoroughly snared in labeling's artful web.
Having created a marketing category, we can't walk away from the tight limitations it puts on our communications with real people—as opposed to the statistically generated mannequins many market researchers long to settle down with and start a family.
Ultimately, the seductive power of Language lies in the reassuringly mechanical thought processes it tempts us to accept. If my goal is to write me some Real Estate Copy, I know I can't go wrong as long as I color within the lines—as laid out by ritualized service pledges, terse action statements and self-congratulatory heralding.
After a few years, you can write this kind of dreck in your sleep, which is why so much of what we ask consumers to read is unreadable—except in the most literal sense.
"Moving, meaningful, human? Just write it already."
As I see it, the saddest piece of this puzzle is the rampant ignorance of the truth behind the "copywriter" label. Do yourself a favor: Peer through the inky fog Language squirts at you when you let it run wild. You'll realize that copywriting has very little to do with words.
The real task of a copywriter is to create a compelling message and then build a structure through which it can flow. It's a collaborative task that can't be handled by the harried keyboard jockeys our pressure-cooker scheduling produces. It's also an evolving process, which is why the rigid mandates of many strategic advisors are a prescription for disaster—precisely because they're prescriptive.
To the chagrin of consultants everywhere, crafting an effective communication is not a connect-the-dots exercise you execute with a "fool-proof system." Instead of proceeding word-for-word from a literal transcription of "key learnings," "audience insights" or "user profiles," your creative messaging team, led by an accomplished copy creative, must interact with the data, test its limits and listen intuitively for its true emotional resonance.
Sure, the strategists' hard work is duly noted and the directional leads it offers are often invaluable. But only someone with the experience, training and talent to understand the impact of language on thought, emotion and meaning can properly manage the intricate interplay of fact, image, sound, rhythm and pacing required to motivate consumers to action.
Everything else is just words, the empty rattling of conventional marketing wisdom, a body of knowledge curiously ignorant of its own central thesis: That its number one goal is to get under consumers' skin and make them itch to take action.
Reaching that goal requires a finely tuned structure that can't be cooked up around a conference table over pasta salad and Coke Zero. In my next post, I'll take a look at some of the ways structure and message interact—as a stab at outlining a more flexible paradigm for crafting consumer messaging.
That's just one of the ways the labels we attach to things can affect our experience. In this sense, Language not only conveys information, it is information.
Take the label "copywriter." Over the last 50 years, as American marketing, like American society, has become more literal-minded, the meaning of "copywriter" has become increasingly limited. In 2012, your garden-variety marketing wonk defines "copywriter" as a technician who writes to order.
And due to the splintering effects of literalism on workflow, that order now frequently comes from a highly specialized "strategist." According to common lore, copywriters only exist to realize a strategist's strategies. They do so by pumping pre-approved PowerPoint slides full of category-appropriate stock phrases—kind of like a building contractor insulating your attic.
According to one school of thought, this analogy is entirely apt. It positions writing as a mechanical process, a skill anyone could learn if they didn't have loftier things to attend to.
Step away from the whiteboard.
It's easy to see why. As America's descent into literalism continues—as evidenced by this season’s GOP debates—even people who should know better think in terms of "Pharmaceutical Copy," "Real Estate Copy," "Financial Copy," "Insurance Copy." That they also posit the existence of "Mommy Marketing Copy," "Hispanic Marketing Copy," and "Alternative Lifestyle Copy" is just this side of bigotry.
Yet this is what Language does to thought and perception if you let it. Ironically, as the premier label-makers of American society, the advertising industry is the one most thoroughly snared in labeling's artful web.
Having created a marketing category, we can't walk away from the tight limitations it puts on our communications with real people—as opposed to the statistically generated mannequins many market researchers long to settle down with and start a family.
Ultimately, the seductive power of Language lies in the reassuringly mechanical thought processes it tempts us to accept. If my goal is to write me some Real Estate Copy, I know I can't go wrong as long as I color within the lines—as laid out by ritualized service pledges, terse action statements and self-congratulatory heralding.
After a few years, you can write this kind of dreck in your sleep, which is why so much of what we ask consumers to read is unreadable—except in the most literal sense.
"Moving, meaningful, human? Just write it already."
As I see it, the saddest piece of this puzzle is the rampant ignorance of the truth behind the "copywriter" label. Do yourself a favor: Peer through the inky fog Language squirts at you when you let it run wild. You'll realize that copywriting has very little to do with words.
The real task of a copywriter is to create a compelling message and then build a structure through which it can flow. It's a collaborative task that can't be handled by the harried keyboard jockeys our pressure-cooker scheduling produces. It's also an evolving process, which is why the rigid mandates of many strategic advisors are a prescription for disaster—precisely because they're prescriptive.
To the chagrin of consultants everywhere, crafting an effective communication is not a connect-the-dots exercise you execute with a "fool-proof system." Instead of proceeding word-for-word from a literal transcription of "key learnings," "audience insights" or "user profiles," your creative messaging team, led by an accomplished copy creative, must interact with the data, test its limits and listen intuitively for its true emotional resonance.
Sure, the strategists' hard work is duly noted and the directional leads it offers are often invaluable. But only someone with the experience, training and talent to understand the impact of language on thought, emotion and meaning can properly manage the intricate interplay of fact, image, sound, rhythm and pacing required to motivate consumers to action.
Everything else is just words, the empty rattling of conventional marketing wisdom, a body of knowledge curiously ignorant of its own central thesis: That its number one goal is to get under consumers' skin and make them itch to take action.
Reaching that goal requires a finely tuned structure that can't be cooked up around a conference table over pasta salad and Coke Zero. In my next post, I'll take a look at some of the ways structure and message interact—as a stab at outlining a more flexible paradigm for crafting consumer messaging.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
