Shape of Things

Ever hear of Bill Simmons? I hadn’t until last week when I saw that his The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy was number one on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller’s list. 

Simmons’ success in traditional publishing stems from his millions of followers on espn.com, where he made his name as The Sports Guy. The appeal is that he’s like any other sports fan, except perhaps a bit more obsessed and a better writer and self-marketer.

Simmons doesn’t write in-depth analysis, go on the road with a team, do psychological profiles, or any of the other things great sports writers have done in the past. He’s not a reporter; he’s a fan. He taps into the common obsessions of fans. Who’s the best basketball center, Wilt or Russell? What football player do you hate the most? He’s fueled by lists, emotions, biases and statistics– just like every other fan.

Like it or not, this is where communications is going — think of twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs.  The majority don’t want an authoritative voice; they want someone like them, or at least, someone like the best vision of themself.

What does this mean to the PR person, the marketer, the publisher, the corporate communicator?

It means you have to stop making proclamations from on high and communicate from the trenches.

You have to speak with your customer’s voice, in terms he or she can relate to.

You have to bring customers’ stories to the forefront of your communications.

You have to establish an ongoing dialog with customers and help make them part of a community.

You have to forego marketing generalities and get into the nitty gritty of your customers’ everyday jobs. 

You have to elevate conversational approaches and downgrade pronouncements.

In short, you likely have to change everything you’ve been doing for the last couple of decades. 

Future posts will deal with how corporate communications and marketing can be revamped to get in synch with how customers want to be engaged. This isn’t theory anymore; it’s a mandate. In the words of David Bowie, “This ain’t rock and roll, this is genocide.”

There’s not much cause to be aggravated at the beach on a beautiful day.  But, there we were returning from an idyllic walk and I was fuming at the horrible quality of writing in the slick beach magazine.

My wife, a writer, had enough.  “I don’t want to hear any more about this.  I can sum up why this happens in two words: ‘good enough’.”

Yes, all the happy, non-specific adjectives, the indirect sentences, the lack of any humanity in an article about a small town we know has an interesting history and funny, articulate people, it all came down to that: It’s good enough.  Good enough to get real estate, restaurant and curio shop advertising.  Good enough for people to thumb through while awaiting fried seafood.

The same could be said for most corporate communication.  Most organizations settle for good enough without recognizing what a disservice it is to them, their customers and partners.

The thing with “good enough” is that it invariably has an expiration date. Search engines were good enough until Google; MP3 players before the iPoD; city magazines before The New Yorker; broiled fish before sushi.

The fact that good enough suffices for the vast majority of organizations sets up major opportunities for those who want to go beyond the average.  Just a little extra can pay big dividends in how your company is perceived, the amount of trust it receives, and the leeway customers are willing to give if you make a mistake.

Here are eight things you can do to move beyond good enough in your communications.

1. Speak in the language of your customers in all of your communications.

2. Communicate with customers in ways that help them become better; be supportive, absorbing, humorous, perspicacious, technically strong and/or sympathetic.

3. Write and publish case studies that make customers the center of attention.

4. Build solid relationships with editors and writers and deliver good material on deadline.

5. Listen to customers whenever possible – at trade shows, conferences and other events – and reflect their joy, fears and pride in your communication.

6. Support or set up community sites that provide useful information for customers and a forum for sharing experiences and answers to problems.

7. Don’t drink the company kool-aid; look at everything with a critical eye and avoid any whiff of propaganda.

8. Hire proven professionals to write and edit for you; don’t leave your story in the hands of amateurs.

These are just eight out of hundreds of ways, big and small, to transcend good enough.  What are some of yours?

I thought it would die a pleasant death, like interest in Paris Hilton after she became a good girl, but it’s not: Authentic is still embedded in the minds of the American business world, especially among PR and marketing people.

The way authentic is being practiced reminds me of a Mad magazine cartoon from the late 60s. A guy’s walking down the street while kids snicker, “What a schmuck!”  Guy gets home, looks himself in the mirror and says “People think I’m a schmuck because I dress like a schmuck.” In the final frame, he’s walking down the street dressed for success like Hugh Hefner (tweed jacket with elbow patches, ascot and pipe) while kids snicker in the background, “What a schmuck!”

What authenticity ain’t

Authenticity isn’t about dressing yourself in new clothes or describing yourself as authentic.  It’s not saying “honestly” or “truly” in your press releases and speeches.  And it’s definitely not posting a picture of your CEO on the website wearing distressed jeans and a retro t-shirt or pursuing his or her rock-climbing hobby.

What it is

Authentic is what someone else feels instinctively about your organization.  What your customers say because all of your dealings with them are embedded with integrity. What the media says because you’re honest and upfront with them. What employees say because they are valued and treated fairly.

If you are doing the above, your company will automatically benefit from word of mouth. But, if you want to extend that, here’s five ways you can ensure authenticity in your communications.

1. Remove adjectives and cliches from your marketing and PR materials, unless you are quoting third parties such as customers and/or analysts.

2. Use clear prose and illustrations to help customers, partners and media understand what you do — don’t hide behind bloated corporate speak.

3. Communicate openly with your customers and employees; take what they suggest, consider it, act on it and thank them for the input.

4. Care about the community of people who use your products and services; provide programs and forums that help them improve professionally and personally.

5. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Show a sense of humor in your communications whenever appropriate.

No amount of rhetoric can buy authentic. If your organization’s values are not strong, no matter what you say, you won’t be able to hide the inner schmuck.

When it comes to PR, most companies fall into one of two categories: protect or serve.

The protect companies tend to regard most media as adversaries, or at least as a necessary annoyance. These companies have a lot of secrets, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. Access to top company officers is about as likely as sitting down for a chat with Kim Jong-il.

The serve companies welcome almost any and all comers. They want to tell their stories. Their default attitude toward media is trust, unless they have good reason to be suspicious. Their leaders are open and accessible.

I’ve worked almost exclusively with serve companies, and readily admit not understanding the reasoning behind some of the protect companies. If they have the proper training, why wouldn’t you want your top people in front of the media? Aren’t they the most passionate at telling the company’s story, the ones who live it every day?

In technical companies, why not train your top engineers to deal with the media and use them as your spokespersons? If your customers are engineers, won’t they respond better to someone with a similar background than to a marketing weenie?

I know that there are repercussions when an executive says the wrong thing. But, unless it’s really heinous (and you’re in a bad situation if you work with people who’ll say heinous things), most gaffes can be corrected, and an honest apology goes a long way.

Don’t know about you, but I trust the company that speaks to me more than the one that doesn’t.

Marketing and PR people say a lot of stuff that they don’t really believe. Or, that they’ve convinced themselves is true. And when it gets into the public’s hands, it invariably rings false.

How often do you see a press release or marketing piece that describes a technology product as “robust,” “intuitive,” “flexible,” or “setting a new paradigm?” Or a corporate announcement larded with exec-speak that obscures any meaning and annoys the average person?

Here’s a little exercise the next time you’re working on a press release, marketing brochure or corporate speech: Make believe you’re talking to your most cynical friend. The friend who brings you thudding to earth when you get too grandiose or preachy. The friend who has no compunction about telling you that you’re full of it.  Now write something that this friend can swallow and digest — possibly even enjoy.

You have little to lose but your pretension.

In software development, it’s called “feature creep.” Here’s how it’s defined in Wikipedia:

Feature creep is the proliferation of features in a product such as computer software. Extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and can result in baroque over-complication rather than simple, elegant design.

Increasingly, the equivalent of feature creep is invading our written communication. It comes in the form of annoying traits that have embedded themselves like killer algae in our text. Here are my 10 creepy things in no particular order. I’d love to hear yours.

1. Those annoying quotation marks everywhere. Thanks to Lynne Truss for telling the world about this in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, and to Seth Godin for reminding us recently.

2. Improper use of apostrophes (thanks again, Seth).

3. Turning nouns into awful verbs. Don’t incent me, please.

4. Avoiding the active voice.

5. Misleading headlines and hard-to-identify jump heads.

6. Typos – they’re everywhere despite (or probably because of) spellcheckers.

7. The 50+ word sentence and 20-line paragraph.

8. Indirect sentences stacked up like planes at LaGuardia.

9. Excessive adverbs and exclamation points.

10. Jargon-filled corporate speak that only insiders understand.

When organizations let these things happen – in brochures, on web sites, in press releases, blogposts and tweets – one can only surmise that they don’t care whether people think they are stupid, careless and insensitive. You are what you communicate.

Editing is a lost art, or at least a misplaced one.  It used to be rare to see a typo or grammatical error in the New York Times; now, it’s almost a daily occurrence.

Although it might seem a bit anachronistic, good editing matters.  How many times have you left a website because of poorly written text or typos? Poor writing and editing often precede the sound of business walking out the door.

I could go on, but the importance of editing is something people get or they don’t.  For those who do, here’s a two-part primer.  It’s no Strunk and White, but it’s a start.  Much of this comes from a Folio magazine seminar taught by Peter Jacobi more than 25 years ago.  Jacobi is now professor emeritus in the Indiana University School of Journalism.

What is Editing?

Editing is selection – knowing what to put in, what to take out, and how to prioritize information.

What is an Editor?

·         A creative planner

·         A visionary

·         A procurer and selector

·         A researcher

·         A conscience

·         A utility person

·         An understudy

·         An enforcer

·         A protector

·         A big-picture person

·         An attention-to-detail person

·         A servant

·         A trench worker

·         A voice

·         A cynic

·         A learner

·         A benevolent dictator

·         An unsung hero

Editing: The Two-Headed Monster

Micro-editing – helping the writer by concentrating on words, meaning, style, structure

Macro-editing – serving the reading audience by setting the agenda, tone and image

10 Ways to Become A Great Editor

1.      Read

2.      Write

3.      Perceive

4.      Appreciate

5.      Analyze

6.      Study

7.      Practice

8.      Be curious

9.      Learn from mistakes

10.  Be helpful

Begin at the Beginning

Know your audience: who they are, what they do, what they know, what they want to know, how they want to find out.

What Every Reader Wants

·         Information – as succinctly and clearly as possible.

·         Interpretation – what does it mean and how does it relate to my world?

·         Entertainment – yes, even technically oriented material should entertain.

What We Don’t Want to Do…

·         Assume that the audience is captive and that the message is a must for the reader – no story has a divine right to be read.

·         Write for the masses – each story goes out to an individual; picture the lonely engineer in the windowless cubicle and bring some light into his or her day.

·         Get into a rut – give readers change before they realize they want it.

·         Bore your reader – stay unique, focus on being different, lively.

The 6 Cs for Success

1.      Clarity

2.      Concise

3.      Complete

4.      Constructive

5.      Credible

6.      Conversational

Oh, and a Couple More

Consistent

Captivating

Part 2:  What to avoid and what to embrace.

References:

The Art of Editing, Floyd K. Baskette and Jack Z. Sissors, 1971, The Macmillan Company, pp. 418-419

The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual, Addison-Wesley Publishing.

Edit your copy as if you are a lecherous skeptic with a jaundiced view of the world.  I hope for your sake you’re not.

Good writing has rhythm and flow.  Read your’s aloud.  Does it swing like a pendulum do or like Duke would do?

Before finalizing, read over that press release, case study, memo or planning document as if you are a complete idiot in the subject matter.