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Don’t Play It Safe

by Heather Miller

Belonging. It’s basic human nature. We want to be a part of the group. Look the same. Be accepted as a member. Share common interests with those around us. Protect ourselves from scorn. Unfortunately, this approach is completely counter- productive when it comes to marketing.

Creating an outstanding brand means it must stand out. And that goes against our natural instincts. It’s much easier to play it safe. Hospitals with that inoffensive blue color scheme. Credit unions that promise to create a relationship with you. Technology brochures packed with technical features. While these cues help us categorize a brand, they do nothing to elevate it above others in the category. Coloring inside the lines will never attract a fanatically loyal customer base.

For example, here’s a selection of hospital logos. See a pattern? The design motif using “hospital blue” and bold, clear letters is safe. Everyone uses it. It’s how we tell our audience we’re in healthcare. We’re serious. We’re professional. We’re credible. What this design doesn’t do is communicate a promise of difference that inspires customers to choose your hospital over another.

Speaking the same (boring) language.

The same is true with marketing language and messaging. When it comes to technology, it’s admittedly a challenge to communicate technical concepts in a clear and compelling way. And unfortunately, most companies – even the big guys – don’t succeed. Here’s how Microsoft describes one of its solutions:

“Microsoft’s integrated management solutions give you the visibility into your environment, while increasing your capability to respond to ever-changing business requirements. Whether on the desktop to provide the optimal experience for accessing the services you provide, or the datacenter to provide the services to your organization, or into the cloud which provides an elastic scalable infrastructure.”

And here’s a product description from technology giant F5:

“BIG-IP WOM is built natively on the F5 TMOS® unified architecture, integrating application delivery with WAN optimization technologies. This enables traditional acceleration technologies like SSL offloading, compression, caching, and traffic prioritizing to combine with optimization technologies like symmetric adaptive compression and application quality of service, reducing complexity in your data center.”

What? Seriously? This kind of language not only muddies the distinctiveness of the offering, but it does a greater disservice by making it nearly impossible to understand what the heck the product even does. And it certainly doesn’t explain why I need it.

Even for things as seemingly inconsequential as a tagline, we shirk originality and cling to familiarity. Check out these lovingly-worded credit union promises:

• It’s All About You.
• Where You Truly Matter.
• Personal Touch Service.
• Exceeding Your Expectations Everyday.

Whew! They’re all so different it’s hard to choose, right? Despite the fact that ALL credit unions are member-owned, many still bank on their “service excellence” to set them apart. And because “many” do this – it doesn’t.

“Professional” can have a personality.

When initiating a marketing or branding project, we often interview company insiders. Those closest to it paint the best picture of how a product, service or company was born to fill a need or solve a problem. They also often reveal the “story behind the story” – the emotional reasons it exists, and the real-life examples that demonstrate its impact on customers’ lives. It is this humanity that draws us in.

But when we write and design marketing materials, the passion is cloaked in vague industry jargon, the unique colors hidden behind technical vernacular. The look and feel is so watered down and homogenized that it’s indistinguishable from competitors. Why do we insist on sterilizing the very elements that make our message compelling?

Most of the time, the argument for this blandness of look and language is the desire to appear “professional.” We fear that breaking out of the mainstream will make us sound out of touch, less believable. We won’t be as easy to categorize. We could be subject to ridicule by peers. Worse, we could alienate our customers. However, the risk of staying within the box is greater. No one ever built a truly great brand by looking and sounding like everyone else.

Being professional doesn’t require stripping out every shred of personality. You can convey authority on a subject without sounding like a technical manual. It’s even possible to have fun with it (shocking!) without sacrificing your credibility. It simply takes a willingness to look your audience in the eye, understand their motivations, and tell your story in a way that answers their most basic question: What’s in it for me?

Thankfully, timidity is not an incurable disease. The remedy is to trust and believe that your customers want to be inspired, not sold. They want to connect emotionally as well as rationally. Brand loyalty is not achieved by telling me “what it does.” It’s driven by “how it makes me feel.”

Five surefire way to improve your messaging.

1. Focus on your customers, not your products. Your product or service, no matter how revolutionary, is never in and of itself a true benefit; it can only serve as the conduit to achieving the real value your customer is looking for.
2. Don’t be afraid to keep it conversational. Would you rather read a textbook or a letter from a friend? “Professional” doesn’t have to be pretentious.
3. Keep it simple. If you can sum up the key benefits in just three sentences at a party, why take a 16-page brochure to explain it to a CEO?
4. Appeal to emotion, not just reason. Clearly outline how your product or service affects people’s lives, or equally provocative, the consequences of living without it.
5. Bring it to life. Use design elements, success stories and anecdotes to turn complex concepts into digestible “stories” that readers can relate to.