Remembering who we're talking to

I opened up last week's session on messaging by asking people to imagine they were in a clothes shop. They'd spotted a jacket and weren't quite sure if they liked it or could afford it.  What would they say to persuade themselves they should buy it?  How might their friends persuade them?

Someone said "I'd imagine all the outfits I could wear it with". Someone else said "My friends would tell me how fantastic I'd look in it, or maybe that the colour really suited me" One person suggested "I'd justify the price by thinking how many times I'd wear it - that way it might actually seem like really good value". Someone said "I'd imagine how great I'd feel wearing it". "My friend might say 'come on, you deserve a treat - you've worked really hard this month'."

Then I asked people to imagine the sales assistant had joined in to persuade them to hand over the credit card.  Here's what the sales assistant says: "We're operating in a very competitive environment right now and our revenues are under pressure, so we really need you to buy the jacket to help us increase sales."  Not convinced yet?  How about "We need to improve our cashflow, and we have to show quarter on quarter improvements to the markets. If you buy this jacket, you'll really help us improve our profits."

Ever heard a sales assistant try and persuade you to buy that way? Me neither. They go for the things they know you'll care about.  But quite often inside organisations, we try to persuade people to buy in by talking about what's in it for the company - not what's in it for them.  It's easy to throw together key messages. But if you really think about the people you're trying to connect with and try and look for an angle they'll actually care about, it gets a lot more tricky.

I was reminded of this when I flicked through the airline magazine on my way home. There was a message from their CEO telling me about their new strategy.  Here's an exceprt from it: "Increased customer focus and the courage to change will permeate our business much more than before. We will work intensively to further increase customer confidence by being perceptive and flexible in all areas of operation. This customer focus will form the basis for a work culture that will generate success - we call it "cultural turnaround."   

Now I'm sure their strategy is excellent, and it has 'customer' written all the way through it. But I couldn't figure what any of it meant for me and put it firmly in the 'high level corporate wibble' category.  The language looked depressingly like the kind of stuff that gets churned out to employees though ...

Sue

PS On a personal note, someone went on a spending spree with my credit card details last week. If anyone from the Nationwide Building Society is reading this, your special investigations team was absolutely superb.  From now on I'll be shredding all my receipts and statements, not just tearing them up as I did before - I never realised easy it was for this kind of thing to happen.   

Comments

[Mark Darby]

It is horrible when someone gets hold of your card details. Visa publishes a few simple steps to protecting yourself whenever you can -

http://www.visaeurope.com/personal/makingthemost/safetyfirst/keepingyourcardssafe.jsp

[Sue]

Now there's a man who never misses an opportunity to be an advocate for his company! Thanks Mark, it's good advice.

(Liam and I were talking last week about the extent to which IC people can/should expect employees to care personally about their companies and products. We also had a long debate about whether we'd enjoyed our jobs more and done better work for the companies we personally identified with. A subject for another post, perhaps.)

[Sandra Falconi]

Really connected with 'Remembering who we're talking to'. Haven't been to this blog before but will definitely be back.

Made me realize am starting to feel uneasy about some of the 'pap' I have drafted on behalf of management teams in the past. We've called it "taking an appreciative approach", "putting a positive spin", etc., in the name of making stuff palatable for the masses. It's beginning to take a toll and I am starting to think it's time for a new career or a new job.

[Timm]

I love the shopping allegory: It demonstrates the WIIFM principle in such an accessible way! I wonder how far you can push that example. As opposed to the clothing store, in the IC context, the company expects to receive personal action (effort, energy) instead of money. How do, for example, charity organizations get people to volunteer for them? How do governments convince citizens to do something?

[Heather Yaxley]

Sue - great example for messaging, thanks. It drives me mad when people write quotes in such a way that someone would be hard pressed to say the sentence as written let alone sound human.

Your example showed in particular the importance of how a message ideally should be individual - everyone has their own way of being persuaded, and good communicators recognise the importance of this rather than boring, vanilla, corporatespeak that motivates no-one.