02.27.08
Getting the message right.
There are some topics which seem to re-occur in my working life.. and effective messaging is one of them! Even today with the good folks I’ve spent some time with on my latest voyage into the murky waters of Marketing and Operations, this simple thing seems to have become lost in the passage of time and the seemingly eternal “we’ve always done it this way!” approach to life.
The phrase which specifically caught my eye.. and which will therefore NEVER make it into final copy was this “Increases the security and reliability from Windows Server 2003″ A seemingly innocuous sentence and one which the copywriters concerned may well have been proud in distilling from the verbose and overly technical information splat they were surely presented with!
The context is, as ever, of premium importance here and, given that it is concerned with the launch of product and services built upon Windows Server 2008 also provides the context for the statement concerned.
My question to the team was this though… “What is this telling me, not what are the words, but what is this statement saying to me as a consumer?”
The answer of course is a pretty blatant “Windows Server 2003 was insecure and unreliable” which, for the record, is simply not true!
And that is the crux of the matter here.. simplicity rules in pretty much everything that we do. If, when boiled down, the core of our message is good, the message itself cannot fail! This message is not good and actually serves to undermine, not only an existing product set (this is Windows Server 2003 after all!) but also the credibility of the customer.. it’s saying “You bought something which isn’t very good and now you must pay again for your mistakes” (again I take pains to point out that this isn’t actually true!) AND the credibility of the hoster who sold the solution to start with!
A better statement would be along the lines of “Improve the security of your business data and the reliability of your operational systems by deploying Windows Server 2008… today!” When all things are equal this is essentially the same thing, but the delivery and positioning makes it a desirable step forward, rather than a mitigation of past mistakes.
I think the message got through and I truly believe that my new friends have a clearer understanding of what it means to position a solution. I await the launch with eager anticipation.
- J.
