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How Sloppy Presentation Kills Credibility

Published January 17th, 2010 in Credibility Quotient, marketing | No Comments »

Organizations tend to extremes when it comes to the presentation aspect of marketing communications. Some obsess on it to the point of overlooking other important needs—like having something compelling to present. But many others seem to believe, like the woman who went to an executive job interview in flip-flops (true story), that people will dig for the diamond beneath the rough. That sounds nice and egalitarian—substance over style and all; trouble is, it’s delusional.

Presentation is one of the key components of credibility (and thus, one of 10 factors we analyze for the Thinkshift Credibility Quotient™). Ample research with website users, for example, shows that people make snap judgments about a company’s credibility based on its site’s design and usability. Note “usability”; people often get caught up in how something looks, but that’s only one aspect of presentation. A credible communication gets all these things right:

  • An aesthetic that’s appropriate for your industry and market.
  • Accessible information. If I’m looking for information about sustainability, or about a particular product’s qualities, can I find it easily?
  • Appropriate materials. If the communication is making sustainability claims, does it use appropriate materials? Any print collateral, for example, should use the lowest-impact materials and processes possible. This applies to packaging, too. Excess or high-impact packaging on a sustainable product undermines the product.
  • Writing quality. Overall, is the communication clear? Do individual statements make sense? Was it proofread? (Yes, I do need to make this point; see “flip-flops” above.)

Sloppy presentation communicates a sloppy approach overall; strong presentation lays a foundation for trust.

Lack of Clarity Can Mean Lack of Credibility

Published November 2nd, 2009 in Credibility Quotient, marketing | No Comments »

We love engineers. We work with a lot of them, and appreciate their analytical minds and openness to well-supported suggestions. But engineers should not be writing marketing copy. Alas, in the world of clean tech (and sometimes other sustainability sectors) it seems they often do.

The result for most readers is a lack of clarity. Symptoms of engineer-driven copy include an overabundance of technical detail up front, inadequate explanations of complex technology and processes, and a failure to show benefits and results. This that can translate to a lack of credibility with the target market in number of ways:

  • When you hit people with technical details right off the bat, many will give up trying to understand and go away.
  • If you can’t explain what you do clearly and concisely, it may send the message that you aren’t quite up to the task of execution.
  • If you don’t show people how they will benefit and what results they’ll see, you give them no reason to engage you.
  • Lack of clarity is increasingly associated with greenwashing (see an earlier post on this).

Communications that are clear and credible explain the  solution and technology as simply as possible, keeping audience needs in mind; provide technical details and specifications separately from core messages whenever possible; and keep benefits and results front and center.

Bringing Statistics Down to Earth

Published August 20th, 2009 in communications strategy, marketing, sustainability | No Comments »

Communicating about sustainability inevitably means communicating about statistics—something I think it’s fair to say we all struggle to do well. How do you make huge numbers, often measuring things that are invisible to us (carbon dioxide emissions, kilowatt hours), meaningful enough to make an impression on people?

Carolyn addressed this earlier this year, providing a neat summary of the use of Fermi problems to tackle the challenge. I’m happy to add another inspiration source, a recent Fast Company column by Made to Stick authors Dan and Chip Heath, “The Gripping Statistic: How to Make Your Data Matter.”

As the Heaths point out, some communicators realize that “big numbers fuzz our brains,” and understand that they need to be translated to something that relates to everyday life. Attempts to solve the problem often don’t pan out, however. One particularly useful (if disgusting) example from the column:

Building intuition about numbers is different from shocking people with numbers. We’ve all heard stats like this one (which is real): 27 billion disposable diapers are used each year in the United States—enough to stretch all the way to the moon and back seven times. What to say about this? For starters, it would be a funny joke to play on the astronauts.

But notice that the astronomical analogy blocks any useful intuition. Would we feel better, for instance, if the diapers only stretched to the moon and back once? That would be just as gross, yet it would mean that six out of every seven families had given up disposables.

The problem here is not just relatability (while we all understand that the moon is far away, most of us haven’t been there) but utility: illustrating the abundance of disposable diapers this way doesn’t give us any insight into how big a problem this is or how we might address it. As the Heaths say, “A good statistic is one that aids a decision or shapes an opinion.”

For  example? There are a couple in the column. If anyone has others, I’d love to hear them.

Bad Language: Why ‘Consumer’ Should Get the Boot

Published August 3rd, 2009 in marketing, sustainability | 3 Comments »

I like to work myself into a good froth before posting one of an occasional series of rants on words and phrases that make me want to spit nails. And I’m finally there on consumer, used to identify a person or people (as opposed to business jargon for a market sector).

In fact, I’ve stewed over this one so long others have beat me to it (see Joseph Romm in Grist). But consumer deserves a pile-on. As in, “Consumers value convenience above all else.”

Well yes, consumers would. But would citizens? Parents? Community members? Patriots? Environmentalists/sports fans/gardeners/name your identity here? The use of the word “consumers” to identify people at all times in all contexts encourages us to think of ourselves—and each other—as nothing more than engines of consumption. It frames our view on problems and solutions in a way that narrows the perspective to purely personal concerns (often amounting to unexamined habits) and positions us as passive recipients of whatever’s out there—we can accept or reject, but not direct.

A sentence like “Consumers care more about perceived effectiveness and than about exposing their household to hazardous chemicals” will be accepted as a truism. Yeah, consumers are like that. Would the sentence “Parents care more about perceived effectiveness and than about exposing their household to hazardous chemicals” seem quite as commonsensical? I’m going to say no.

I’m also going to take a vow: I will never again use the word consumer to refer to a person or people. (I admit it, I’ve done it.) And at the risk of sounding preachy, I think everyone who writes or talks about sustainability issues should do the same. The words we use to describe things affect how we see them. And even when we’re shopping—perhaps especially when we’re shopping—we need to stop seeing ourselves as simply creatures who buy things.

‘Know Your Audience’ Applies to Sustainability, Too

Published June 8th, 2009 in communications strategy, marketing, sustainability | No Comments »

In an article from Environmental Leader, IBM Global Business Services’ Corporate Sustainability leader, Jeff Hittner, likens companies’ approach to CSR to the early days of the Internet, when “People would come to us and say, ‘Wow. We need a Web site.’ We’d ask what their customers wanted in a Web site and they’d say ‘We don’t know. We only know we need a Web site.’”

Hittner and his colleague Eric Riddleberger talked to leaders at 224 companies around the world about CSR efforts, publishing their findings in a white paper, “Leading a Sustainable Enterprise.” Their surveys show that while two-thirds of companies focus on CSR as an integrated business strategy, most of them don’t know what their customers or partners expect when it comes to sustainability information. Thirty-seven percent of companies had done no research on customers’ CSR concerns, and 35 percent of them had done research for less than three years.

Most of them are in the dark when it comes to communicating about what the company is doing and engaging stakeholders, be they customers, partners, or anybody else. Hittner and Riddleberger found that a little over half (fewer than you’d think) are even trying to communicate with investors, business partners, government, and the community. It’s a bit better for employees, with 63 percent of companies engaging with them.

Not surprisingly, Hittner recommends that companies do customer research, find out who is most interested in sustainability, and develop programs that education and engage customers about sustainability.

That way, when you say, “We need a website for sustainability,” you’ll know not only what you need to communicate, but who you need to reach and what they want to hear from you.

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