Ideas for profitable
communication
by Baruch ter Wal

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

June 7th, 2010

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.

My biggest screw-ups (part 1 in an occasional series)

February 23rd, 2010

Four years ago we were asked to design sales material for a new software service.

We produced a “before and after” diagram aimed at strategic decision makers. It beautifully illustrated the behavioural changes required, and the various efficiency gains that these would make possible. The client liked it, as did a small test audience of CEOs and CFOs.

When the material was used in practice, however, it emerged that operational staff were also key decision makers, along with the strategic managers they reported to. The strategic managers were conceptual thinkers. But the operational staff were concrete thinkers, and they found our diagram shallow and unconvincing.

One of the most important principles of business-to-business design is to identify all of the different decision makers, and tailor material to them. Four years ago, we failed to live up to that principle.