Archive for the ‘Commerce’ Category
Falling off the fence
I’ve written a couple of blogs for different organisations this month. They all had one thing in common; they wanted to give their opinion on something relevant to their industry or area of expertise without offending or alienating customers and service users. Which isn’t that easy, because it’s very easy to offend when you critique. Not because you’re being aggressive, but because others may be defensive.
To really withdraw from this risk, you need to sit on the fence. In this position, you can balance the view from both fields. Which is fine when you want to produce bland copy that helps people explore both sides of a coin. But, when you’re looking for something attention-grabbing, sitting on the fence – as the saying goes – gives you splinters. Personally, I don’t get on with opinion ‘from the fence’. Not just because I don’t want to spend my evening removing splinters, but because I don’t trust it.
I managed to talk my clients round to taking a clear position. Here are the benefits:
How To Spell Spam.
An interesting piece popped up on Yahoo News last week; an account about a council tax scam where fraudsters contact you to say you’re due a financial reward as a thank you for paying your bill by direct debit.
Now I don’t know about you, but the concept of my local council financially rewarding me for paying tax would be enough to make me click ‘SPAM’ faster than you can say ’seriously unlikely state incentive’. However, clearly enough people were falling for this to warrant its broadcast, albeit hidden within the confused jumble that is Yahoo’s landing page. So I read the whole thing and there – towards the end – was a paragraph about spelling.
Tinker, tailor: Writing to your niche
Generally speaking, I try to avoid re-blogging anything to do with blogging – especially when the post is blatant corporate selling. So, it’s with a not-insignificant amount of knuckle-chewing that I pass this on. This is a post from Hubspot about how blogs are using more complicated language than traditional media. This shouldn’t be a surprise: old media = well-trained journalists who can write; blogs = anyone. Plus a few good copywriters. *Cough*
Ferry clear thinking
Joe Ferry – head of design and service design at Virgin Atlantic – spoke eloquently in yesterday’s Media Guardian about innovation in service design. What he said was so sensible, it’s the kind of thinking we all secretly hope goes on in the heads of our clients:
“We often work with external agencies. They work with so many different companies that they can bring you totally new ideas from other industries.” He goes on to say that “…the objective in service design is to define exactly what it is you want the experience to be and then work back to establish how you can navigate the constraints you have – and actually deliver that.”
What’s the (second) Big Idea?
I’ve been reading a few blogs by fairly well-lit individuals in the business and marketing world. Some appear to conjure up new concepts on a regular basis. Quite aside from how exhausting this must be, it made me think about whether it’s actually possible to come up with more than one Big Idea.
One or two of my subscriptions include the blogs of successful business gurus, considered experts who are watched by a certain sector of Corporate plc for the next big thing – this on the basis that they’ve already delivered one widely adopted Big Idea. But are subsequent pearls of wisdom original new ideas of value and reason for contact, or just the same story set in a different scene?