of the Word
Venturing through a well-regarded clinic yesterday, I paused to consider its apparent values statement.
I made it a point to recall the six attributes it mentioned.
I remember Joy, Stewardship, Learning, and...it might have been Excellence, maybe Care, and...
"Stewardship" I remember because it's that slight anomaly, the "new cliche." Cliches almost always are old, but sometimes a word catches on and becomes a cliche while the word is still in its infancy -- and that's the case with stewardship.
To test it, ask yourself, how inspired are you by the thought of being a steward? Are you sure you know what a steward is? Do you sometimes wonder if it's like a shepherd, but involves more indoor work?
Joy? That's not too bad in a company, especially one that deals with life and death -- which means they suffer many unjoyous moments, too.
Learning? I have to like that because we encouraged a client to use that in its values statement, not least of all because in its industry -- automobiles -- learning is indispensable but often overlooked.
The other three -- three of the six I made it a point to remember?
I forget.
This happens because communicators still fail to realize that what they say is not what gets heard -- not least of all because unless you say something in a way that resonates, it slips off us like mercury on Teflon.
Microsoft refuses to believe this. It has decided to amaze the world with its new Vista operating system, a system so good and so new that the only word that captures its magic is....Wow.
Now Wow will work, if Vista truly is Wow. But it isn't. Reviewers see it as a virtual clone of what Apple introduced years ago. Gadgets copies Mac's Widgets right down to the last five letters of its name. Translucent windows, live thumbnails, search boxes in every Explorer window -- right off Apple's OS X Tiger. Speech recognition? That's almost 11 years old.
What will be the consequence? The next time Microsoft touts something as "pretty neat," many prospects will ignore them. Their wordsmiths are going to need to work every weekend to try to overcome this, and followers of computer marketing will be overcome by deja vu, reminded of how desperately IBM had to work -- almost a decade -- to overcome the backlash against the undelivered promises of it hyperbolic Charlie campaign.
As marketers destroy the meaning of words like "unique" (no wonder people today feel compelled to say "most unique," which one day soon will be replaced by "truly the most unique"), and as people seem less skilled at using them, it not only becomes necessary, but profitable, to find words that stop us and stay with us for days.
"Wow" won't work. "Insanely great," Apple's mantra for several years, does. It's odd, yet credible to virtually every Apple user.
"The tightest ship in the shipping business" works. It's uncommon, and wonderfully rhythmic. "A commitment to excellence" doesn't work; it's so shopworn you want to throw it in the wash.
"Finger-licking good" works. It's uncommon, and sensory. You can see and feel yourself licking that chicken smell off your fingers.
"A 50-year tradition" -- and any variation on it? No. It's common, and meaningless, and it's not about helping me, it's just touting the company's survival.
"The ultimate driving machine" worked because no one had ever called cars "driving machines." The expression was new, and therefore uncommon. "The ultimate automobile" never would have worked -- even for Lamborghini. "Ultimate automobile" is old and ordinary; it sounds like someone decided at the last minute they needed a slogan, and slapped that on as the ad was heading out the agency's door.
"Chicken Soup" books sell like hotcakes; "Inspiration for" books sell about 10,000 copies, tops. Chicken Soup is sensory; you can see it and taste it. Inspiration? What does it look like?
A Guide to Modern Marketing might sell 10,000 copies tops, too. The same book called Selling the Invisible sold enough to help fund two American wars.
What's in words that work?
Simplicity: Clear, clean, quick -- our minds haven't the time for more.
Freshness: Our eyes are are drawn to things they've never seen.
Believability: Which is why "we're the best" claims never work, but "we're number two" worked magic.
Sensoriness: Ideally, we can see what you're saying -- "Kiwi" works but "fruit" doesn't. And beyond sight, appealing to taste (Red Pepper), touch (Black Velvet), or a distinctive sound (the always-funny "Ew" in Google and Yahoo!). "Laughter," which you can see and hear works. Happiness, which is harder to see and impossible to hear, doesn't.
Do your words work?
According to customers today, only 15% of companies communicate clearly. Never mind "well," never mind "memorably" -- "clearly." Everyone can communicate better -- and without question, the rewards are huge.
Find the words that work.
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Just released on Thursday, You Inc. has been named by the American Independent Booksellers as a Notable Book of 2007.
Not more than six business-related books earn that designation each year. In addition,
Borders Monthly is featuring the book and an interview with Christine and Harry in their
March issue, which goes to over one million customers. The Borders reviewer calls the
book "splendid." We hope you love it and tell your friends!!
Following the
Madding Crowd
All day outside our home above Lake Calhoun, a remarkable ritual takes place.
For hour after hour, cars stream in the three lanes, but one of the lanes -- the far right -- is far more crowded.
Noticing this for the first time, you might assume there's a logical explanation. Perhaps a heavily trafficked arterial lane feeds into this lane, or perhaps there's a popular right-hand exit just up the street, and the drivers are preparing for their turn early.
But neither of those things is true -- nor is there any other obvious explanation. No one could call this an optimizing strategy. To the contrary, if you choose this lane you will endure at least one more stop light on your way to your destination.
You are living life in the slow lane.
Why?
Having observed this phenomenon for years, I'm convinced there is only one plausible explanation: herding behavior. From studying stock markets, for example, we know that people often follow crowds, even when it is against their best interest. So drivers choose not the lane that will optimize their transportation strategy -- get them to their destination safely in the shortest possible time -- but the lane that everyone else is in, for what they assume must be an excellent reason.
Sales and marketing people learn about herding behavior early in their careers. A good suit salesman, for example, learns that telling a customer that this two-button, blue serge suit is their store's "most popular one this season," will encourage the customer to seriously consider that purchase. Similarly, every good catalog marketer learns what Roger Horchow learned quickly in his career, one that included creating the famous Horchow Catalog: the more times the word "popular" appears in the catalog, the more sales it is likely to generate.
"Everyone loves this item," the thinking goes. "So you will -- and should -- too."
While herding behavior can often be manipulated by marketers, it regularly works against them, too -- because marketers are themselves easy marks for herding behavior. As evidence, choose three industries at random: banking, remote network management, and comedy clubs. Now, Google these terms and survey the websites for several firms in each of these industries.
What do you notice? The websites between these industries appear very different, but the sites within these industries look remarkably alike. Indeed, there appears to be a template for each industry.
Is this an optimal strategy? Is there value to looking and sounding like your competitors? No. To the contrary, unless you are the market leader, the majority of prospects reviewing these sites will -- like those in herds -- default to the leader.
You constantly hear that success in marketing hinges on creating and communicating distinctions. But constantly, marketers tend to get in the far right hand lane. They choose not the optimum strategy, but the popular one.
It's hard to resist that popular saw that says unless you are the lead dog, the view ahead of you is pretty ugly.
Are you following the optimal strategy -- or the herd?
Academy Awards
The awards are getting better while the movies are getting worse. To make this emphatic, the highlight of the show wasn't a speech, a movie clip, or anything on film; it was an extraordinary dance performance that created silhouettes representing each Best Picture nominee. If the pictures had been as good, the industry would be flourishing. Instead, all the genius, or near-genius, is now appearing on -- who would ever guess? -- television!
31 No Good Very Bad Days
If you have a bad day, just know that you're not even in the finals of your local Bad Day competition.
Consider, by comparison, the series of hideous days a 32-year-old trader at Amarath Advisors suffered last year.
He lost $6.5 billion in one month. (31 days, $6,500,000,000.00)
Assuming a normal work month (of course, it's laughable to consider a month like that "normal"), our Amarath Advisor watched 700,000 dollars disappear off his screen each minute. His numbers were dropping 115,000 dollars every second.
See? Your day isn't so bad after all.
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Harry Beckwith is the Director of Beckwith Partners, an internationally regarded branding
and marketing firm. His classic trilogy on marketing a service -- Selling the Invisible,
The Invisible Touch, and What Clients Love -- has sold over 900,000 copies
in 22 translations, and the first book has been named one of the ten best business and
management books of all time. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National Speakers' Association convention, and has made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is cited regularly in |
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national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis with his wife Christine Clifford Beckwith. He is the father of six children. Beckwith Partners' clients include Wells Fargo, Fidelity Investments, Microsoft and Target as well as many venture-capitalized startups worldwide. |
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E-mail questions and comments for Harry Beckwith to invisble@bitstream.net.