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Not long ago, MarComments blogged about the adventures of preparing English copy for translation. Think of this as a follow-up. But this time it’s about an even trickier subject: converting technical language into English.
It’s tricky, but it’s important. That’s because you and we are often trying to communicate about highly technical products to not-so technical people. They might be very smart people with advanced degrees and whizzes at whatever it is they do. But that doesn’t mean they know bupkis about storage interfaces, including multifunction, Fibre Channel, RAID, iSCSI, and SCSI adapters.
Yet these people are often the decision makers when it comes to buying what you and we are selling. If we’re not careful, prospective customers will find themselves browsing through our brochures, white papers, and websites—and never know what we’re talking about.
This can lead to lost sales. Not to mention lost jobs.
Imagine trying to build a house without a blueprint, scale Everest without a Sherpa, or create boeuf bourguignon without a cookbook. Yes, it’s true that certain people can do these things unassisted, either by rote or by instinct. And some could probably do all three… at once. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Julia Child was a secret carpenter and mountaineer.)
Most of us, though, need guidelines to help us build, climb, or cook. It’s the same with blogging. Technically, you can create, write, and edit a blog without guidelines, but it’s probably not prudent.
Having guidelines is especially helpful if you’re creating a B2B blog like this one. We’re learning this here at Harding Marketing, as we go through the process of creating the very blog that you’re reading right now. We’ve written some guidelines, but we’ll need to expand them as we learn new things along the way.
Nobody likes rules—except maybe school teachers, the Marquess of Queensberry, and some guy named Robert. Plus every mom on earth.
So it’s not surprising that graphic designers—those free-spirited folks who make your brochures and websites look so spiffy—are offended by typographical rules. Therefore let’s not call these rules. Instead, let’s call them guidelines. Or helpful advice. Or typographical tips to enhance legibility and make your marketing communications more effective. In short, let’s call them the type of thing that can be helpful.
Get it? Type of thing?
In honor of today’s subject, this should probably start with a joke. Maybe something like: Did you hear the one about the man who laughed his ads off?
Okay, maybe not.
Maybe those of us in marcom should just forget about using humor because our responsibilities are, like, way serious.
But at Harding Marketing, we think that begs the question: serious to whom? Marcom copy is pretty darn serious to those of us who manufacture it, but who are we kidding? You and we can come up with brilliant strategies. We can focus on benefits. We can include bullets and callouts and subheads and a powerful call to action. But if we don’t write copy that readers enjoy reading (or listening to), our chance of success is reduced by a whole lot. Maybe even more.
Is any industry’s vocabulary more laden with jargon, gibberish, and gobbledygook than the universal language of the corporate world? (That was a rhetorical question; the answer is a resounding no.)
I’m referring here to corporate-speak: words that are technically English, in that you’ll probably find them in the dictionary, but whose primary definition rarely has much in common with its business meaning. Words like “leverage,” “stakeholder,” and “aspirational.”
For instance, Merriam-Webster defines “stakeholder” first as “a person entrusted with the stakes of bettors.” But its corporate-speak meaning is closer to the arcane third definition: “one who is involved in or affected by a course of action.” (Um, wouldn’t that include anyone who breathes?)
If you’ve been tasked with either assigning someone to write a mission statement, or actually writing one yourself, you may be wondering: What is a mission statement, anyway?
You’re not alone. A large contingent of the population, especially outside the corporate world, doesn’t really know what a mission statement is. And probably a good portion of that group actually includes marketing professionals.
But writing a mission statement isn’t as Marketing 101-ey as you’d think.
For most of you, this is obvious. But it’s also important, so here goes: All TV sets have a volume control. That’s called “a feature.” The power to turn up the volume REALLY LOUD so you can hear CSI Miami from the kitchen is called “a benefit.” Although the neighbors might disagree.
In marcom copy, the distinction between features and benefits is vital because most people don’t actually care about a volume control. What they care about is volume.
This demonstrates one of marketing’s greatest truths: Most customers think benefits are more important than features. It seems simple, yet there is confusion, although not among marcom professionals such as you and we. But others less highly evolved have been known to blur the lines—which is a nice way of saying they sometimes get it all wrong.
Most of us remember exactly how long it takes to write a term paper. It takes all night the night before it’s due.
But what about a piece of effective marketing communications? How long does it take to create a really good brochure? A data sheet? Or a case study?
When you think of everything that can mess with your schedule, it’s amazing that any marcom gets produced at all—let alone on time. On the other hand, people who manage marcom projects need some reasonable understanding of the time they’ll need to get jobs out the door.
Perhaps we can help. At Harding Marketing, we’ve developed a few guidelines for timelines. They’re not carved in stone, but they do help us answer the troubling question: How long is all this going to take?
We start by breaking the problem into its component parts.
Brochures are not required to carry a passport. Maybe that’s a mistake.
In a global economy, brochures, data sheets, sales guides, and other marketing communications are often written in one language (let’s say American English), then read in another. Along the way, writers spend hours trying to find just the right words—which end up with translators who manage to find just the wrong ones.
And it doesn’t take a whole brochure to mess things up. There’s a true story of how a simple slogan like “Finger lickin’ good” was translated into Chinese, quickly becoming, “Eat your fingers off.”
Making the case for the case study
06/07/2010 in Copywriting, MarComments | Tags: Case study, Copywriting, Marcom, Marketing | by Harding Marketing | Leave a comment
Here is an extremely abbreviated history of the case study:
Ok, so you probably won’t find the above in any legitimate historical tome. But case studies, at least in their more familiar guise as “success stories,” are as old as human history itself.
The term “case study” means something different to the scientific and business communities. In broad language—and as it applies to both fields—the case study is an in-depth investigation of or research report on one individual, group, event, or community, real or imagined.
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