Ideas for profitable
communication
by Baruch ter Wal

My biggest screw-ups (part 2 in an occasional series)

A while ago Shaun asked me to generate some copy for the cover of a technology product brochure.

He’d mocked up the visuals, using just the word “Easy” as placeholder text. My job was to come up with an actual title, plus some supporting benefits. But I was so taken with that one, powerful word, that I felt we should go with his original mockup. “Easy” really summed up the product’s point of difference. And to convey the service that went with the product, we used an image of a smiling young lady.

It really stood out against the competing Big Boys’ Toys tech product brochures, and the client team loved it.

The visually-minded among you will have noticed the problem: You can’t label a smiling young lady “Easy”. Doh.

I’ve spoken before about the importance of testing on real people, and in this case the screw-up was detected by Shaun’s wife. It was not, however, detected by us or by the client team members. The design solution was good in theory, and so marketing people gave it a pass.

We work in increasingly cerebral environments, where “good in theory” tends to get equated with “good”. But they’re not the same thing, and we all need to get out more.